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"There is no such thing as a neutral educational process." ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Pedagogy is not ideologically neutral." This line has been for me almost a mantra over the last several years. I've said variations of it on Twitter, on the About Us page of Hybrid Pedagogy, and in our recent CFP focused on Critical Digital Pedagogy. I've circled around this phrase, because I feel increasingly certain that the word "pedagogy" has been misread - that the project of education has been misdirected - that educators and students alike have found themselves more and more flummoxed by a system that values assessment over engagement, learning management over discovery, content over community, outcomes over epiphanies. Education (and, to an even greater extent, edtech) has misrepresented itself as objective, quantifiable, apolitical.

Higher education teaching is particularly uncritical and under-theorized. Most college educators (at both traditional and non-traditional institutions) do little direct pedagogical work to prepare themselves as teachers. A commitment to teaching often goes unrewarded, and pedagogical writing (in most fields) is not counted as "research."

The entire enterprise of education is too often engaged in teaching that is not pedagogical. There are a whole host of other words I'd use to describe this work: instruction, classroom management, training, outcomes-driven, standards-based, content delivery. Pedagogy, on the other hand, starts with learning as its center, not students or teachers, and the work of pedagogues is necessarily political, subjective, and humane.

What is Critical Pedagogy?

Critical Pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning predicated on fostering agency and empowering learners (implicitly and explicitly critiquing oppressive power structures). The word "critical" in Critical Pedagogy functions in several registers:

Critical, as in mission-critical, essential;

Critical, as in literary criticism and critique, providing definitions and interpretation;

Critical, as in reflective and nuanced thinking about a subject;

Critical, as in criticizing institutional, corporate, or societal impediments to learning;

Critical Pedagogy, as a disciplinary approach, which inflects (and is inflected by) each of these other meanings.

Each of these registers distinguishes Critical Pedagogy from pedagogy; however, the current educational climate has made the terms, for me, increasingly coterminous (i.e. an ethical pedagogy must be a critical one). Pedagogy is praxis, insistently perched at the intersection between the philosophy and the practice of teaching. When teachers talk about teaching, we are not necessarily doing pedagogical work, and not every teaching method constitutes a pedagogy. Rather, pedagogy necessarily involves recursive, second-order, meta-level work. Teachers teach; pedagogues teach while also actively investigating teaching and learning. Critical Pedagogy suggests a specific kind of anti-capitalist, liberatory praxis. This is deeply personal and political work, through which pedagogues cannot and do not remain objective. Rather, pedagogy, and particularly Critical Pedagogy, is work to which we must bring our full selves, and work to which every learner must come with full agency.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire argues against the banking model, in which education "becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor." This model emphasizes a one-sided transactional relationship, in which teachers are seen as content experts and students are positioned as sub-human receptacles. The use here of "sub-human" is intentional and not exaggeration; for in the tenets set out in Freire's work (and the work of other Critical Pedagogues, including bell hooks and Henry Giroux), the banking model of education is part and parcel with efforts most clearly summed up in the term dehumanization. The banking model of education is efficient in that it maintains order and is bureaucratically neat and tidy. But efficiency, when it comes to teaching and learning, is not worth valorizing. Schools are not factories, nor are learning or learners products of the mill.

I immediately become deeply skeptical when I hear the word "content" in a discussion about education, particularly when it is accompanied by the word "packaged." It is not that education is without content altogether, but that its content is co-constructed as part of and not in advance of the learning.

Critical Pedagogy is concerned less with knowing and more with a voracious not-knowing. It is an on-going and recursive process of discovery. For Freire, "Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other." Here, the language echoes the sort of learning Freire describes. With a flurry of adjectives and clauses separated by commas, his sentence circles around its subject, wandering, pushing restlessly at the edges of how words make meaning - not directly through literal translation into concepts, but in the way words rub curiously against one another, making meaning through a kind of friction. Knowledge emerges in the interplay between multiple people in conversation - brushing against one another in a mutual and charged exchange or dialogue. Freire writes, "Authentic education is not carried on by 'A' for 'B' or by 'A' about 'B,' but rather by 'A' with 'B'." It is through this impatient dialogue, and the implicit collaboration within it, that Critical Pedagogy finds its impetus toward change.

In place of the banking model, Freire advocates for "problem-posing education," in which a classroom or learning environment becomes a space for asking questions - a space of cognition not information. Vertical (or hierarchical) relationships give way to more playful ones, in which students and teachers co-author together the parameters for their individual and collective learning. Problem-posing education offers a space of mutual creation not consumption. In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks writes, "As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another's voices, in recognizing one another's presence." This is a lively and intimate space of creativity and inquiry - a space of listening as much as speaking.

What is Critical Digital Pedagogy?

My work has wondered at the extent to which Critical Pedagogy translates into digital space. Can the necessary reflective dialogue flourish within web-based tools, within social media platforms, within learning management systems, within MOOCs? What is digital agency? To what extent can social media function as a space of democratic participation? How can we build platforms that support learning across age, race, culture, gender, ability, geography? What are the specific affordances and limitations of technology toward these ends? If, indeed, all learning is necessarily hybrid, as I've argued, to what extent are Critical Pedagogy and digital pedagogy becoming also coterminous?

The wondering at these questions is, in fact, not particularly new. In his forward to Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Richard Shaull writes, "Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of most of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system [...] The paradox is that the same technology that does this to us also creates a new sensitivity to what is happening." And, John Dewey writes in Schools of To-Morrow, published decades earlier, "Unless the mass of workers are to be blind cogs and pinions in the apparatus they employ, they must have some understanding of the physical and social facts behind and ahead of the material and appliances with which they are dealing." If we are to keep every educative endeavor from becoming mill-work - from becoming only a reflection of oppressive labor practices and uneven power relationships - we must engage deeply with its reality.

Increasingly, the web is a space of politics, a social space, a professional space, a space of community. And, for better or worse, more and more of our learning is happening there. For many of us, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between our real selves and our virtual selves, and in fact, these distinctions are being altogether unsettled. In "The New Learning is Ancient", Kathi Inman Berens writes, "It doesn't matter to me if my classroom is a little rectangle in a building or a little rectangle above my keyboard. Doors are rectangles; rectangles are portals. We walk through." When we learn online, our feet are usually still quite literally on ground. When we interact with a group of students via streaming video, the interaction is nevertheless face-to-face. The web is asking us to reimagine how we think about space, how and where we engage, and upon which platforms the bulk of our learning happens.

In Small Pieces Loosely Joined: a Unified Theory of the Web, David Weinberger writes, "We are the true 'small pieces' of the Web, and we are loosely joining ourselves in ways that we're still inventing." Ten years ago, following the publication of Weinberger's book, I wouldn't have imagined the learning networks I have now built with colleagues working together (sometimes simultaneously in real time) in places as seemingly remote as Portland, Madison, Manchester, Prince Edward Island, Sydney, Cairo, and Hong Kong.

This is not to say, however, that there aren't challenges to this sort of work. In On Critical Pedagogy, Henry Giroux argues,

Intellectuals have a responsibility to analyze how language, information, and meaning work to organize, legitimate, and circulate values, structure reality, and offer up particular notions of agency and identity. For public intellectuals, the latter challenge demands a new kind of literacy and critical understanding with respect to the emergence of the new media and electronic technologies, and the new and powerful role they play as instruments of public pedagogy.

Most digital technology, like social media or collaborative writing platforms or MOOCs, does not have its values coded into it in advance. These are tools merely, good only insofar as they are used. And platforms that do dictate too strongly how we might use them, or ones that remove our agency by too covertly reducing us and our work to commodified data, should be rooted out by a Critical Digital Pedagogy. Far too much work in educational technology starts with tools, when what we need to start with is humans.

We are better users of technology when we are thinking critically about the nature and effects of that technology. What we must do is work to encourage students and ourselves to think critically about new tools (and, more importantly, the tools we already use). And when we're looking for solutions, what we most need to change is our thinking and not our tools.

In short, Critical Digital Pedagogy:

centers its practice on community and collaboration;

must remain open to diverse, international voices, and thus requires invention to reimagine the ways that communication and collaboration happen across cultural and political boundaries;

will not, cannot, be defined by a single voice but must gather together a cacophony of voices;

must have use and application outside traditional institutions of education.

A Critical Digital Pedagogy demands that open and networked educational environments must not be merely repositories of content. They must be platforms for engaging students and teachers as full agents of their own learning.

Pete Rorabaugh writes in " Occupy the Digital: Critical Pedagogy and New Media ":

Critical Pedagogy, no matter how we define it, has a central place in the discussion of how learning is changing in the 21st century because Critical Pedagogy is primarily concerned with an equitable distribution of power. If students live in a culture that digitizes and educates them through a screen, they require an education that empowers them in that sphere, teaches them that language, and offers new opportunities of human connectivity.

Critical Pedagogy is as much a political approach as it is an educative one. As Sean Michael Morris writes, it is "a social justice movement first, and an educational movement second."

So, Critical Digital Pedagogy must also be a method of resistance and humanization. It is not simply work done in the mind, on paper, or on screen. It is work that must be done on the ground. It is not ashamed of its rallying cry or its soapbox. Critical Digital Pedagogy eats aphorisms - like this one right here - for breakfast. But it is not afraid to incite, to post its manifestos, to light its torches.
On November 21 at the OpenEd Conference in Washington, DC, Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel will present on critical digital pedagogy and MOOCs. This is the first of three articles that inspired that talk.

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We are better users of technology when we are thinking critically about the nature and effects of that technology. What we must do is work to encourage students and ourselves to think critically about new tools (and, more importantly, the tools we already use).

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Educational Research: Learning from life in lockdown

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Educational Research: Learning from life in lockdown

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I am writing at my kitchen table, after months of 'working from home'. As a researcher who studies cognitive and brain development in early-mid childhood, it has been a very strange time. Schools are still mostly shut. The home has become the classroom.

Not long after lockdown began researchers in my field started planning research projects. What is the impact of this unprecedented situation? What might it mean for children and their families? What are the immediate and long-term consequences for education and well-being?

These are all important questions. But initial enthusiasm has gradually become tempered by reality. Conducting research during lockdown is not easy. Just as schools are suspended, so are some aspects of University life. And conducting a large-scale research project from your kitchen table is no fun. Designing protocols, preparing tasks or questionnaires, obtaining ethical permissions, securing funding, liaising with schools, overcoming technical issues, dealing with queries from families... the list goes on. Moreover, will families really want to take part in research now? As parents juggle child-care, schooling, working from home, and other caring responsibilities, maybe now is the worst time for a research project

In addition to the practical constraints, there are scientific issues too. Without baseline data - i.e. data from before the pandemic - it is impossible to know whether anything you find is the result of the current situation. This is important. Also, who will take part in educational research during a pandemic? And will they be the most representative families? Probably not.
Under what circumstances should we engage in educational research during a pandemic?
Am I saying that we shouldn't bother with educational research right now? Absolutely not. There are important questions to ask, and we need to address them. Instead I am suggesting there are some conditions we need to meet in terms of scientific quality and practical benefit. As researchers we must (albeit reluctantly) face the reality that now might not be the right time for our research study, unless we are confident that the results will be interpretable and useful to teachers and families.

But provided these conditions are met, there some studies ideally placed to generate important data. Particularly those with existing cohorts that can be tracked over time, with baseline and follow-up data. There are teams of scientists who specialise in this kind of research - their expertise is greatly needed right now.
What questions should we be asking?
With limited resources available - including the precious time of participants - we should focus on the most relevant questions. I think we need to know which children will be most affected by the lockdown, and how long this impact is lasting. To my mind, this is probably the most practical research outcome for teachers. But we are not coming to this blind - there are some very obvious predictions we can make:

1. Children from poorer households will fall further behind their peers, as a group. There are all sorts of caveats to this statement (e.g. definitions of 'poverty', moderating factors, problems with group comparisons etc.), but at a national level this is sadly a very robust phenomena. This so-called attainment gap will have widened during lockdown, especially as more affluent parents are often better equipped to mitigate the lack of face-to-face schooling. Free school meal (or pupil premium) status would be one way to identify these kids. But this was a very blunt measure before lockdown, and missed lots of children that need support; it will be even coarser after the economic shock of lockdown. So it would be great if the data collected during lockdown could help us identify who is likely to need more support. This isn't a new issue - we have known about this effect for decades, and in my opinion, we haven't done nearly enough to address it.

2. Children with cognitive challenges will need more time to 'find their groove' when school reopens. For example, children who cannot hold as much information in working memory as their peers tend to be more sensitive to their learning environment. Skilled teachers carefully control working memory demands in class to mitigate this effect. My worry is that when school resumes there will be a 'make up for lost time' mentality, and that this will favour some children over others. Moreover, when school does restart there will be social distancing, altered timetables and other special circumstances, it is the children learning despite cognitive challenges that will be most affected. Some of these children will have a SEND label, but most won't. It would be great if the data could tell us about the wellbeing and educational progress of these children, so we have accurate information about how they are reintegrating into school life.

3. Anxiety levels will be high. This pandemic is been anxiety provoking for everyone. And with an historic backdrop of rising anxiety levels, my worry is that this could become a major predictor of how well children can adapt to a return to school. Furthermore, with social distancing and reduced opportunity for play, teachers may have fewer tools in their arsenal to support anxious children.

If researchers have data on these key groups of children before the pandemic, it would be great if they could follow them through the lockdown period and as they integrate back into school. Collecting quality data in these areas is not just important for understanding lockdown and recovery. We may unearth some unexpected findings, with long-lasting implications for education provision. Maybe there are cohorts of children who are thriving away from conventional schooling. What can we learn from their experience? Might there be some permanent changes to education that we want to make?
The right time for advocacy
In short, there definitely is a place for educational research during a pandemic and its aftermath. But it needs to be designed to support teachers and families address practical challenges, rather than just because there is an interesting opportunity. But for the rest of us, now is definitely the right time for advocacy. There are so many relevant insights from existing educational research, and it is critical that these make their way to charities, support groups, schools and ultimately policy makers.
Duncan is a Programme Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, where he leads the 4D Research Group. He is also a Fellow and Director of Studies at Robinson College. He is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist and his research uses multiple methods to explore how brain systems develop through childhood, in typically developing children, children with disorders of attention, children with genetic mutations, and children with problems in classroom learning. Duncan currently serves as the Chair of the Cambridge NIHR BioResource's Scientific Advisory Board, an Editor at Cortex and the Journal of Neuropsychology, Chair of the University's LGBT+ Staff network, and Council Member at Learnus. For more information on Duncan's research, please see his lab website here or follow him on Twitter.
Find out more about the aims of the Learnus blog here.

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I am writing at my kitchen table, after months of 'working from home'. As a researcher who studies cognitive and brain development in early-mid childhood, it has been a very strange time. Schools are still mostly shut. The home has become the classroom. Not long after lockdown began researchers in my field started planning research...

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1858 new photos · Album by Education and Training Foundation

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in the process of updating

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It goes without saying - it's been an incredibly busy and challenging time for teachers. What's more, educational technology has played a vital role during this time, both during the lockdown and further restrictions, in helping to deliver remote and blended learning.

The need for this will continue into 2021. That's why we're making all our LearnED Online content available free - now and until our next Roadshow.

To access this,simply register and you can watch all the LearnED Online sessions at a time that works for you.

What is LearnED?

Supported by DfE, LearnED is a series of free CPD-led conferences that explore and support the effective use of technology in schools.

Due to COVID-19, we took our Autumn 2020 Roadshow online and delivered a series of virtual Expert Panel discussions and Masterclasses.

LearnED Online

Perfect for Head Teachers, Deputy Heads and ICT Leads in Primary and Secondary Schools, and Multi-Academy Trusts, LearnED is all about learning from your peers and understanding best practice.

What school looks like now

How schools are revisiting learning lost during lockdown

How schools are designing their remote education and blended learning strategies

During these online sessions, our range of educational experts and teachers share their experiences of using educational technology in school. There's a focus on the lessons we can learn from lockdown - what has worked well and what has worked less well. There's also advice on how to make this work for your students.

Hear from Julia Garvey, Operations Director for a flavour of what to expect.

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It goes without saying - it's been an incredibly busy and challenging time for teachers. What's more, educational technology has played a vital role during this time, both during the lockdown and further restrictions, in helping to deliver remote and blended learning. The need for this will continue into 2021.

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online tool offering the opportunity to search, select and trial education technology resources for free, to determine their suitability before committing to purchase

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During the COVID-19 outbreak, LendED is here to help schools get the most out of their existing resources, and provide teachers with easy-to-use home learning materials.

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Help with accessing and buying resources for remote education

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Help with accessing and buying resources for remote education

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The Department for Education (DfE) has collated a list of resources and initiatives to support schools to plan and deliver remote education. This includes a range of DfE-funded curriculum support as well as a list of DfE-approved frameworks, which schools may find helpful.

Teaching resources

Free online education platforms

You can use the following free online educational resources:

Oak National Academy provides video lessons for reception up to year 11 to support remote education

BBC Bitesize provides primary and secondary resources for teachers and pupils

Educational suppliers and publisher directories

Publishers and suppliers can help schools make informed decisions about investing in digital or printed resources to support education. Teachers should also talk to their existing providers to determine what further services might be available. You can read further guidance on buying for schools, including how to save money and make the most of suppliers' services.

The following suppliers provide a wide range of support and resources:

British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) supplier directory ranges from curriculum content and publishing suppliers to equipment and training suppliers

EdTech Impact helps schools find the best education technology (EdTech) for their needs

LendED helps schools search for and compare EdTech resources from trusted suppliers

Publishers Association (PA) represents publishing companies - their publishing directory includes profiles of all their members and associate members

Subject associations

The Council for Subject Associations (CfSA) provides an inventory of each subject association's offering.

Curriculum support

The following list of subjects highlights the DfE-funded curriculum resources and initiatives which can support remote education.

Primary schools

English

English Hubs offer support (resources and training) to eligible, local schools, including local authority maintained schools, academies and free schools. This is to improve teaching of phonics, early language and reading in reception and year 1.

Secondary schools

Citizenship

The Deliberative Classroom is a project to support teachers to lead knowledge-based discussions and debates with students on topical issues relating to fundamental British values, citizenship and equality.

Modern foreign languages

The National Centre for Excellence for Language Pedagogy (NCELP) works in partnership with university researchers, teacher educators, expert practitioners, and 18 specialist teachers in 9 leading schools across the country. These form language hubs to improve language curriculum design and pedagogy. Support includes professional development tools, teaching resources and workshops.

Science

Isaac Physics is an online platform that offers support and physics problem solving activities to students transitioning from GCSE to sixth-form college, and progressing to university. It also helps to reduce teacher workload.

Institute of Physics provides free, bespoke support for teachers of physics to increase the take-up of A level physics, particularly by girls.

Science Learning Partnerships improve science teaching, including facilitating continuous professional development and providing support for schools to increase the take-up of GCSE triple science.

All key stages

Computing

Teach Computing helps you discover training, resources and guidance to support you in teaching computing with confidence. Computing hubs offer local, tailored support to schools and colleges to improve the teaching of computing and increase participation in computer science.

Maths

Advanced Mathematics Support Programme aims to increase participation and improve teaching in level 3 maths qualifications.

The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics provides materials and guidance to help schools adapt maths teaching for pupils being educated both remotely and in the classroom.

Maths Hubs bring together maths professionals in a collaborative national network of 40 hubs, each led locally by an outstanding school or college, to develop excellent practice.

Music

Music Education Hubs bring together local authorities, schools and art, community or voluntary organisations to make sure all pupils have access to music education.

Relationships, sex, and health education

Support and training materials for schools to help train teachers on relationships, sex, and health education.

Using a framework

A procurement framework is an agreement between suppliers and buying organisations (for example, government departments or local authorities) to supply goods or services without having to run lengthy tendering exercises. These deals are made available to schools.

School buying professionals can use frameworks to save significant time and money as they are pre-awarded contracts with pre-agreed terms and conditions.

You can find quality-assured suppliers of goods and services for your school through the Find a framework service.

Frameworks and suppliers

Recommended frameworks

There are a wide range of DfE-recommended frameworks covering the majority of school spend areas. The following frameworks are particularly useful for supporting the delivery of remote education:

Classroom and library resources

Library resources includes: books, e-books, journals and periodicals, e-journals, audiobooks, audio summary, library discovery and associated services split into 4 lots with 12 suppliers - curriculum books are also available through this deal

ICT software and hardware

Find a framework has details of all recommended frameworks and supporting guidance.

Framework providers

DfE-recommended frameworks provide schools with access to lists of quality-assured suppliers which can be used by any school, in any region. Framework providers include:

There are other framework providers available.

Regional Schools' Buying Hubs

Schools' Buying Hubs is an initiative designed to help schools with buying activities. DfE currently funds 2 regional buying hubs offering advice and guidance to school buyers in the south-west and north-west regions:

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Help with accessing and buying resources for remote education

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The Department for Education (DfE) has collated a list of resources and initiatives to support schools to plan and deliver remote education. This includes a range of DfE-funded curriculum support as well as a list of DfE-approved frameworks, which schools may find helpful.

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Many subjects including English and maths

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Use BBC Bitesize to help with your homework, revision and learning. Find free videos, step-by-step guides, activities and quizzes by level and subject.

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Interactive resources for English (Literacy), Maths (Numeracy) & ESOL

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Interactive resources for English (Literacy), Maths (Numeracy) & ESOL

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These interactive materials have been taken from the old Read write plus, Move on and Key skills Trainer sites. They provide useful teaching and learning activities from entry level 1 through to level 2 in English (Literacy) and maths (Numeracy). There are also a limited number of resources for ESOL (E3 and L1 only).

Click on the link below to go to the materials for

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Interactive resources for English (Literacy), Maths (Numeracy) & ESOL

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These interactive materials have been taken from the old Read write plus, Move on and Key skills Trainer sites. They provide useful teaching and learning activities from entry level 1 through to level 2 in English (Literacy) and maths (Numeracy).

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all subjects

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What's new?

Browse all our lessons and resources

Designed to ease your planning, our new teachers-only hub lets you browse Oak's full curriculum of lessons, slides and all the worksheets available for you and your pupils.

Customise lessons to your pupils

You know your students best. So now you can choose which parts of our lessons to share with your class. Turn the quiz on or off, or just share the video. It's up to you.

Save, share, download and edit

To help reduce workload we've nearly 10,000 lessons available. You can save lessons to your own private list, share links with your students more easily, and download and edit lesson resources so they better meet your needs

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Oak National Academy Teachers Hub | Teacher Hub | Oak National Academy

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Designed to ease your planning, our new teachers-only hub lets you browse Oak's full curriculum of lessons, slides and all the worksheets available for you and your pupils. You know your students best. So now you can choose which parts of our lessons to share with your class.

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Looking for free online resources to use with your learners?

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Looking for free online resources to use with your learners?

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July 2019

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National standards for essential digital skills

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National standards for essential digital skills

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April 2019

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Blended Learning Essentials: Developing Digital Skills

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Blended Learning Essentials: Developing Digital Skills

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This might be useful for anyone starting out

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Developing digital skills in the modern workplace

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An online course for teachers and trainers to support the development of learners' digital skills in the modern workplace.

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Exploring the impact of digital and data poverty on BAME learners

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Exploring the impact of digital and data poverty on BAME learners

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Jisc's shaping the digital future of FE and skills programme last year reinforced digital and data poverty as a pressing concern for the sector requiring further understanding and action. The COVID-19 pandemic has widened the digital and social divide, and black, asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities have been disproportionately impacted by the virus, hence the focus of this research.

This is a complex social issue; we have only been able to 'scratch the surface' and large-scale empirical data linking digital poverty with learning experience/ outcomes of different demographic groups is lacking. An early analysis of data from Jisc's FE learner digital experience insights survey 2021 is helping to bridge this gap, however.

The purpose of the deep dive is to understand better:

The impact of digital and data poverty on black, asian and minority ethnic (BAME) learners' educational experience and outcomes

The extent to which BAME learners are disproportionally affected

What steps can be taken to address digital and data poverty

Download the report (pdf)

About the authors

Charles Hutchings

Jisc insight team

Marianne Sheppard

Jisc insight team

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Exploring the impact of digital and data poverty on BAME learners

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Jisc's shaping the digital future of FE and skills programme last year reinforced digital and data poverty as a pressing concern for the sector requiring further understanding and action. The COVID-19 pandemic has widened the digital and social divide, and black, asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities have been disproportionately impacted by the virus, hence the focus of this research.

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Effective Formative Assessment using EdTech for use in the Classroom

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Effective Formative Assessment using EdTech for use in the Classroom

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2Mar21

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Skipton Girls' - EdTech Demonstrator School

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Effective Formative Assessment using EdTech for use in the Classroom

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Shaping the digital future of FE and skills

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Shaping the digital future of FE and skills

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Kick-started by the rapid shift to online working and studying enforced by the pandemic, shaping the digital future of FE and skills is a cross-sector research project led by Jisc, working in tandem with the Association of Colleges (AoC).

During summer 2020, the project has brought together college leaders, teachers, learners, sector bodies and edtech experts in a series of leadership roundtables and research webinars.

It has established a consensus on what "good" looks like as campuses are reopening, and the project's first report offers recommendations to government, sector bodies and colleges in order to realise the potential of technology to benefit the and skills sector now and into the future.

Improving online education experiences and outcomes will require a fundamental shift from merely transferring courses online to transforming digital learning, teaching and assessment. This report sets out how that might be achieved.
Download the full report (pdf)

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Shaping the digital future of FE and skills

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Kick-started by the rapid shift to online working and studying enforced by the pandemic, shaping the digital future of FE and skills is a cross-sector research project led by Jisc, working in tandem with the Association of Colleges (AoC).

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Breakout rooms 
No pressure for those that don’t want it on
Lots of ways to give FB anonymously (eg Menti and Jamboard)
chat (more useful for adults as it’s not anonymous)
lots of opportunities for verbal responses 
virtual backgrounds (make it into an activity for the next session - but be aware of bandwidth)
Setting homework that require them to have their cameras on at the beginning (eg. Next lesson everyone must be wearing a hat/masks at the beginning of the session)
be understanding of the reasons why people don’t have their cameras on.
‘set your stall’ at the beginning with verbal encouragement 
short sharp moments online with Y/N or T/F post its for AfL. 
similar as above ^ learners get a red/green item from their house and use instead of post its. Do with a cohort you trust so no offensive items.
open the room early to say hi and check in
Zoom reactions

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Best evidence on supporting students to learn remotely

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Best evidence on supporting students to learn remotely

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Whats working well in remote teaching jan 21

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Whats working well in remote teaching jan 21

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As we move into a third national lockdown, with remote education for most pupils once again the default, we are of course very aware of the heroic efforts of leaders, teachers and staff in developing remote education.

Likewise, we know there are difficulties and challenges that schools, colleges and teachers face in doing so. This short guide, which draws on findings from our interim visits, research and literature review, aims to provide some useful tips.

What is remote education?

There are different definitions out there, but these are the ones we will use here:

Remote education: a broad term encompassing any learning that happens outside of the classroom, with the teacher not present in the same location as the pupils.

Digital remote education: often known as online learning, this is remote learning delivered through digital technologies.

Blended learning: a mix of face-to-face and remote methods. An example would be the 'flipped classroom', where main input happens remotely (for example through video), while practice and tutoring happen in class.

Synchronous education: this is live; asynchronous education is when the material is prepared by the teacher and accessed by the pupil at a later date.

Some common myths about remote education

Some unhelpful myths exist about remote education, which are not based on evidence.

These include that:

remote education is fundamentally different to other forms of teaching/learning

remote education is a different curriculum/offer to the content that would be delivered normally

the best forms of remote education are digital

the best way to deliver remote education is always through live lessons

the most important thing is pupils' engagement

None of these things are necessarily true. Below, we counter them with evidence-based pointers.

Here are 7 things to think about when providing remote education. Note that they are not in order of importance.

1: Remote education is a way of delivering the curriculum

Remote education is a means, not an end. The aim of education is to deliver a high-quality curriculum so that pupils know more and remember more. Remote education is one way of doing so.

This means that everything we know about what a quality curriculum looks like still applies. The remote education curriculum needs to be aligned to the classroom curriculum as much as possible. And, just like the classroom curriculum, it needs to be carefully sequenced and ensure that pupils obtain the building blocks they need to move on to the next step. Curricular goals should be made as explicit remotely as they would be in the classroom.

Remote education is not the same as digital education. Sometimes, it may be more effective to deliver remote education through worksheets or a textbook. All schools/colleges should have access to a digital platform so they can provide online education where that is the most appropriate method.

A good textbook can provide the curriculum content and sequencing pupils need. It can also be easier to access for some pupils. However, when using textbooks or worksheets it is still important to make sure that teachers can provide feedback and assess learning. Any worksheets should be aligned with the curriculum and provide meaningful work.

2: Keep it simple

Our brains don't learn differently using remote education, so everything we know about cognitive science and learning still applies. We don't have to make huge changes to the way we teach.

We also don't need to overcomplicate resources with too many graphics and illustrations that don't add to content. When using digital remote education, the platform we use shouldn't be too complicated to use. Just as we don't need 'all-singing, all-dancing' lessons in the classroom, remote education often benefits from a straightforward and easy-to-use interface. Simple graphics that highlight the key concepts and features we want to teach can be most effective.

More important is attention to the key elements of effective teaching. For example, it's useful to provide pupils with an overview of the bigger picture and where a specific lesson or activity sits within a sequence of lessons or activities. It's also vital to have clear and high expectations and to communicate these to pupils. Just as in the classroom, most pupils will be novices in what we are teaching them. We can't expect them to be able to discover new content for themselves through tasks, projects and internet searching.

There are of course some things that need more careful consideration when teaching remotely. For example, when using recorded lessons, clarity of explanations becomes even more important as we can't as easily correct misunderstandings or misconceptions.

Another example is the 'split attention' effect. Pupils can find it harder to concentrate, so the way we integrate words and pictures or graphs is important. Text can be integrated with images where that is appropriate and doesn't just encourage guessing. This can be shown in chunks in the appropriate place. This makes the words into a description of the images and allows pupils to focus on what is most important.

As it's harder for pupils to concentrate when being taught remotely, it's often a good idea to divide content into smaller chunks. Short presentations or modelling of new content can be followed by exercises or retrieval practice.

3: When adapting the curriculum, focus on the basics

We will often need to adapt our subject curriculum when moving to remote education, for example because some topics are hard to teach remotely. When we do this, we need to focus on the basics:

Beware of offering too much new subject matter at once. Make sure key building blocks have been understood fully first. We need to assess pupils' knowledge to determine this.

Consider the most important knowledge or concepts pupils need to know. Focus on those.

Consider what alternatives exist for traditional practical activities. What can be done at home, or using simulations, for example? Worked examples and modelling can work very well in remote digital education.

In many cases, practising and a focus on developing existing knowledge and skills, such as handwriting or simple arithmetic, may be useful.

4: Feedback, retrieval practice and assessment are more important than ever

Learning isn't fundamentally different when done remotely. Feedback and assessment are still as important as in the classroom. It can be harder to deliver immediate feedback to pupils remotely than in the classroom, but teachers have found some clever ways to do this.

This immediate feedback can be given through:

chatroom discussions,

1-to-1 interaction tools

interactive touch-screen questioning in live recorded lessons

adaptive learning software

Peer interactions can provide motivation and improve learning outcomes. It's therefore worth considering enabling these through, for example, chat groups or video-linking functions. They will also help pupils maintain their social skills.

It is important for teachers to stay in regular contact with pupils. If necessary, they can even do this by using technology to automate communication. Some teachers have set up automated check-in emails to pupils to identify where they are with set tasks. This also gives a perception that teachers are 'watching' while pupils learning remotely.

Assessment is built into some online platforms and most textbooks. Low-stakes quizzes can be built in to remote education, as can written assignments and retrieval practice activities. It can be helpful to make sure pupils are 'warmed up' and 'readied' for content through an introductory task or scene-setting. Pupils can then be invited to re-visit and process the main content further in an additional task or later lesson through retrieval practice.

5: The medium matters (a bit)

Quality of teaching is far more important than how lessons are delivered. But there is some evidence that the medium does matter, especially in digital remote education. Pupils tend to spend longer accessing a remote lesson when they are using a laptop than when using a phone (tablets are in between).

This means that we need to think carefully about whether pupils have access to the right kind of device when we're using digital remote education. If they don't, and we can't provide enough devices, it might be better to consider non-digital approaches as well.

When using digital remote education, we often rely on internet access. Again, we need to consider whether pupils have this and what we can provide if they don't. The Department for Education provides support on internet access, and on setting up a digital education platform.

It is also worth considering where to host content. In the battle for attention against the internet, we need to consider whether we avoid hosting video lessons on certain platforms like YouTube, for example, because of their advertising algorithms distracting pupils.

6: Live lessons aren't always best

Some think that a live lesson is the 'gold standard' of remote education. This isn't necessarily the case. Live lessons have a lot of advantages. They can make curriculum alignment easier, and can keep pupils' attention, not least as the teacher has more control over the learning environment. But live lessons are not always more effective than asynchronous approaches.

There are some specific difficulties in doing live lessons. It can be hard to build in interaction and flexibility. This means that giving feedback can actually be less effective than when we use recorded lesson segments followed by interactive chats, or tasks and feedback. Using recorded lessons produced externally can allow you to easily draw on high-quality lessons taught by expert subject teachers. The challenge here can be to make sure they are integrated with the curriculum.

Because evidence suggests that concentration online is shorter than the length of a typical lesson, filming a classroom lesson may be ineffective.

Different approaches to remote education suit different types of content and pupils. Mixed models may be effective in some cases. For example, you could use the so-called 'flipped learning' model. In this, new content is taught through an asynchronous recorded lesson. Practice, tutoring and feedback are then done synchronously.

7: Engagement matters, but is only the start

It's harder to engage and motivate pupils remotely than when they are in the classroom. There are more distractions, and as a teacher you're not physically present to manage the situation. Communicating and working with parents, without putting an unreasonable burden on them, can help support home learning.

A lot of attention has been paid to ways in which online education can be made more engaging. For example, we can make sure different types of tasks and activities are alternated, or build in rewards and incentives to make learning more 'game-like'.

While it is important to engage pupils, this is only a precondition for learning, not the thing itself. There is only so much a teacher can do to engage pupils remotely. We therefore need to make sure that efforts to engage don't distract us from teaching the curriculum. We also need to check whether pupils have actually learned the content we want them to through assessment.

Engagement increases when pupils feel part of the school or college community. Whole-school digital assemblies and feedback, for example through newsletters to pupils and parents, can help them feel part of the community even when learning remotely.

More resources on remote education

There are a number of useful resources to help you with remote education, including:

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As we move into a third national lockdown, with remote education for most pupils once again the default, we are of course very aware of the heroic efforts of leaders, teachers and staff in developing remote education. Likewise, we know there are difficulties and challenges that schools, colleges and teachers face in doing so.

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While the professors wanted to respect student privacy, the lack of ambient feedback when the Zoom camera was off put a real damper on learning. "Instructors benefit from receiving nonverbal cues from their students such as smiles, frowns, head nods, looks of confusion, and looks of boredom, so that they can evaluate their teaching in real time and adjust accordingly to improve student learning," Castelli and Sarvary write-emphasizing the value that comes from being able to read students' faces.

Students, too, benefit from being able to see each other onscreen. In the study, a majority indicated that "using videoconferencing helped build trust and rapport with other students and helped them to develop a sense of identification with others in their group." The social context of living classrooms-the often-invisible human connection that reinforces learning-was missing for students, who insisted "that being able to hear and see each other in real time helped construct a 'more complete picture' of their peers."

If both sides of the educational equation were losing out, then a middle ground needed to be found, the professors thought-one that respects the rights of students but supports the social dynamics of learning, at least in some situations.

To refine their strategies around camera use, Castelli and Sarvary surveyed hundreds of students to identify their main privacy concerns. The students, it turns out, weren't staying off-camera for the anticipated reasons. Forty-one percent of students said they turned their cameras off because they were "concerned about [their] appearance": They had messy hair, were wearing pajamas, or hadn't yet showered, the study reported. Relatedly, 17 percent of students felt that everyone was watching them, creating a sensation of unbearable self-consciousness.

Equity-related issues also cropped up. Underrepresented minorities were twice as likely to be concerned about their homes being visible and were 12 percentage points more likely to cite a weak internet connection-perhaps a reflection of how the pandemic can exacerbate the digital divide.

QUICKLY ESTABLISH A NORM

Being proactive about cameras early on can be an easy first step to establishing the norm-more so than during the school year, if a camera-off culture has set in.

That's because virtual classrooms-and the expectations that follow-may be new to most students. In the study, one in 10 students didn't turn their camera on simply because they felt that was the norm. "If you don't explicitly ask for the cameras and explain why, that can lead to a social norm where the camera is always off," Castelli and Sarvary warn. It can quickly become "a spiral of everyone keeping it off, even though many students want it on."

To counter this, Castelli and Sarvary recommend including the camera policy in the class syllabus and explicitly encouraging camera use on the first day of class. A camera-on norm can also help address the main reason why students turned their cameras off: concerns about their personal appearance. If students anticipate being seen on camera, they'll be more likely to brush their hair and dress appropriately.

TEACHER-TESTED STRATEGIES TO ENCOURAGE CAMERA USE

Addressing norms doesn't mean that students will turn the camera on daily-you'll still need to make accommodations for students, and you'll need to encourage camera use contextually.

For Liz Byron Loya, a visual arts teacher in Boston, encouraging students to turn their cameras on has its roots in building a positive community, not in expecting compliance from students.

"Focus on trust, both teacher to student and student to student," writes Byron Loya. "Students who know they are safe and cared for by their community will be more comfortable having their cameras on."

Icebreakers and games-Pictionary and charades come to mind-can help ease students into turning their cameras on, especially if they feel that the focus is less on them and more on the activity.

Byron Loya also offers specific tips for encouraging students to turn their cameras on:

Survey students to identify barriers preventing them from participating.

Remind students that they can use a virtual background if they don't want to show what's happening behind them.

Encourage students who have social capital to use their cameras.

Enable the waiting room and greet students one by one as they enter your virtual class.

Use Zoom's "Ask to Start Video" feature to invite students to turn their cameras on.

For students who are reluctant about giving a live presentation, provide an option to submit a prerecorded video.

For students who request to keep their cameras off, high school teacher Katie Seltzer holds camera-optional Socratic seminars. "Students in the outer circle, who typically would be evaluating the participation of their peers in the inner circle, used the chat feature to echo powerful comments they heard and ask questions of the inner-circle group," writes Seltzer. There's no stigma associated with having their cameras turned off, since the activity allows them to fully participate in a way that mirrors the activity in traditional in-person classrooms.

Alex Shevrin Venet, a community college teacher and former school leader at an alternative high school in Vermont, believes that the key to encouraging students to turn their cameras on starts with the teacher. Model mistakes and try to be authentic, she suggests, and let students know that it's OK to be themselves on video.

"Don't worry about sounding rehearsed or making your space look Instagram-perfect," writes Shevrin Venet. "Embrace the fun and silly moments when pets and family members make guest appearances. Create an environment where students recognize that turning cameras on means laughter, making silly faces at friends, and being seen for who they are."

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While the professors wanted to respect student privacy, the lack of ambient feedback when the Zoom camera was off put a real damper on learning.

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Pedagogy starts with learning as its center, not students or teachers, and the work of pedagogues is necessarily political, subjective, and humane.

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"There is no such thing as a neutral educational process." ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Pedagogy is not ideologically neutral." This line has been for me almost a mantra over the last several years. I've said variations of it on Twitter, on the About Us page of Hybrid Pedagogy, and in our recent CFP focused on Critical Digital Pedagogy. I've circled around this phrase, because I feel increasingly certain that the word "pedagogy" has been misread - that the project of education has been misdirected - that educators and students alike have found themselves more and more flummoxed by a system that values assessment over engagement, learning management over discovery, content over community, outcomes over epiphanies. Education (and, to an even greater extent, edtech) has misrepresented itself as objective, quantifiable, apolitical.

Higher education teaching is particularly uncritical and under-theorized. Most college educators (at both traditional and non-traditional institutions) do little direct pedagogical work to prepare themselves as teachers. A commitment to teaching often goes unrewarded, and pedagogical writing (in most fields) is not counted as "research."

The entire enterprise of education is too often engaged in teaching that is not pedagogical. There are a whole host of other words I'd use to describe this work: instruction, classroom management, training, outcomes-driven, standards-based, content delivery. Pedagogy, on the other hand, starts with learning as its center, not students or teachers, and the work of pedagogues is necessarily political, subjective, and humane.

What is Critical Pedagogy?

Critical Pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning predicated on fostering agency and empowering learners (implicitly and explicitly critiquing oppressive power structures). The word "critical" in Critical Pedagogy functions in several registers:

Critical, as in mission-critical, essential;

Critical, as in literary criticism and critique, providing definitions and interpretation;

Critical, as in reflective and nuanced thinking about a subject;

Critical, as in criticizing institutional, corporate, or societal impediments to learning;

Critical Pedagogy, as a disciplinary approach, which inflects (and is inflected by) each of these other meanings.

Each of these registers distinguishes Critical Pedagogy from pedagogy; however, the current educational climate has made the terms, for me, increasingly coterminous (i.e. an ethical pedagogy must be a critical one). Pedagogy is praxis, insistently perched at the intersection between the philosophy and the practice of teaching. When teachers talk about teaching, we are not necessarily doing pedagogical work, and not every teaching method constitutes a pedagogy. Rather, pedagogy necessarily involves recursive, second-order, meta-level work. Teachers teach; pedagogues teach while also actively investigating teaching and learning. Critical Pedagogy suggests a specific kind of anti-capitalist, liberatory praxis. This is deeply personal and political work, through which pedagogues cannot and do not remain objective. Rather, pedagogy, and particularly Critical Pedagogy, is work to which we must bring our full selves, and work to which every learner must come with full agency.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire argues against the banking model, in which education "becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor." This model emphasizes a one-sided transactional relationship, in which teachers are seen as content experts and students are positioned as sub-human receptacles. The use here of "sub-human" is intentional and not exaggeration; for in the tenets set out in Freire's work (and the work of other Critical Pedagogues, including bell hooks and Henry Giroux), the banking model of education is part and parcel with efforts most clearly summed up in the term dehumanization. The banking model of education is efficient in that it maintains order and is bureaucratically neat and tidy. But efficiency, when it comes to teaching and learning, is not worth valorizing. Schools are not factories, nor are learning or learners products of the mill.

I immediately become deeply skeptical when I hear the word "content" in a discussion about education, particularly when it is accompanied by the word "packaged." It is not that education is without content altogether, but that its content is co-constructed as part of and not in advance of the learning.

Critical Pedagogy is concerned less with knowing and more with a voracious not-knowing. It is an on-going and recursive process of discovery. For Freire, "Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other." Here, the language echoes the sort of learning Freire describes. With a flurry of adjectives and clauses separated by commas, his sentence circles around its subject, wandering, pushing restlessly at the edges of how words make meaning - not directly through literal translation into concepts, but in the way words rub curiously against one another, making meaning through a kind of friction. Knowledge emerges in the interplay between multiple people in conversation - brushing against one another in a mutual and charged exchange or dialogue. Freire writes, "Authentic education is not carried on by 'A' for 'B' or by 'A' about 'B,' but rather by 'A' with 'B'." It is through this impatient dialogue, and the implicit collaboration within it, that Critical Pedagogy finds its impetus toward change.

In place of the banking model, Freire advocates for "problem-posing education," in which a classroom or learning environment becomes a space for asking questions - a space of cognition not information. Vertical (or hierarchical) relationships give way to more playful ones, in which students and teachers co-author together the parameters for their individual and collective learning. Problem-posing education offers a space of mutual creation not consumption. In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks writes, "As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another's voices, in recognizing one another's presence." This is a lively and intimate space of creativity and inquiry - a space of listening as much as speaking.

What is Critical Digital Pedagogy?

My work has wondered at the extent to which Critical Pedagogy translates into digital space. Can the necessary reflective dialogue flourish within web-based tools, within social media platforms, within learning management systems, within MOOCs? What is digital agency? To what extent can social media function as a space of democratic participation? How can we build platforms that support learning across age, race, culture, gender, ability, geography? What are the specific affordances and limitations of technology toward these ends? If, indeed, all learning is necessarily hybrid, as I've argued, to what extent are Critical Pedagogy and digital pedagogy becoming also coterminous?

The wondering at these questions is, in fact, not particularly new. In his forward to Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Richard Shaull writes, "Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of most of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system [...] The paradox is that the same technology that does this to us also creates a new sensitivity to what is happening." And, John Dewey writes in Schools of To-Morrow, published decades earlier, "Unless the mass of workers are to be blind cogs and pinions in the apparatus they employ, they must have some understanding of the physical and social facts behind and ahead of the material and appliances with which they are dealing." If we are to keep every educative endeavor from becoming mill-work - from becoming only a reflection of oppressive labor practices and uneven power relationships - we must engage deeply with its reality.

Increasingly, the web is a space of politics, a social space, a professional space, a space of community. And, for better or worse, more and more of our learning is happening there. For many of us, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between our real selves and our virtual selves, and in fact, these distinctions are being altogether unsettled. In "The New Learning is Ancient", Kathi Inman Berens writes, "It doesn't matter to me if my classroom is a little rectangle in a building or a little rectangle above my keyboard. Doors are rectangles; rectangles are portals. We walk through." When we learn online, our feet are usually still quite literally on ground. When we interact with a group of students via streaming video, the interaction is nevertheless face-to-face. The web is asking us to reimagine how we think about space, how and where we engage, and upon which platforms the bulk of our learning happens.

In Small Pieces Loosely Joined: a Unified Theory of the Web, David Weinberger writes, "We are the true 'small pieces' of the Web, and we are loosely joining ourselves in ways that we're still inventing." Ten years ago, following the publication of Weinberger's book, I wouldn't have imagined the learning networks I have now built with colleagues working together (sometimes simultaneously in real time) in places as seemingly remote as Portland, Madison, Manchester, Prince Edward Island, Sydney, Cairo, and Hong Kong.

This is not to say, however, that there aren't challenges to this sort of work. In On Critical Pedagogy, Henry Giroux argues,

Intellectuals have a responsibility to analyze how language, information, and meaning work to organize, legitimate, and circulate values, structure reality, and offer up particular notions of agency and identity. For public intellectuals, the latter challenge demands a new kind of literacy and critical understanding with respect to the emergence of the new media and electronic technologies, and the new and powerful role they play as instruments of public pedagogy.

Most digital technology, like social media or collaborative writing platforms or MOOCs, does not have its values coded into it in advance. These are tools merely, good only insofar as they are used. And platforms that do dictate too strongly how we might use them, or ones that remove our agency by too covertly reducing us and our work to commodified data, should be rooted out by a Critical Digital Pedagogy. Far too much work in educational technology starts with tools, when what we need to start with is humans.

We are better users of technology when we are thinking critically about the nature and effects of that technology. What we must do is work to encourage students and ourselves to think critically about new tools (and, more importantly, the tools we already use). And when we're looking for solutions, what we most need to change is our thinking and not our tools.

In short, Critical Digital Pedagogy:

centers its practice on community and collaboration;

must remain open to diverse, international voices, and thus requires invention to reimagine the ways that communication and collaboration happen across cultural and political boundaries;

will not, cannot, be defined by a single voice but must gather together a cacophony of voices;

must have use and application outside traditional institutions of education.

A Critical Digital Pedagogy demands that open and networked educational environments must not be merely repositories of content. They must be platforms for engaging students and teachers as full agents of their own learning.

Pete Rorabaugh writes in " Occupy the Digital: Critical Pedagogy and New Media ":

Critical Pedagogy, no matter how we define it, has a central place in the discussion of how learning is changing in the 21st century because Critical Pedagogy is primarily concerned with an equitable distribution of power. If students live in a culture that digitizes and educates them through a screen, they require an education that empowers them in that sphere, teaches them that language, and offers new opportunities of human connectivity.

Critical Pedagogy is as much a political approach as it is an educative one. As Sean Michael Morris writes, it is "a social justice movement first, and an educational movement second."

So, Critical Digital Pedagogy must also be a method of resistance and humanization. It is not simply work done in the mind, on paper, or on screen. It is work that must be done on the ground. It is not ashamed of its rallying cry or its soapbox. Critical Digital Pedagogy eats aphorisms - like this one right here - for breakfast. But it is not afraid to incite, to post its manifestos, to light its torches.
On November 21 at the OpenEd Conference in Washington, DC, Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel will present on critical digital pedagogy and MOOCs. This is the first of three articles that inspired that talk.

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We are better users of technology when we are thinking critically about the nature and effects of that technology. What we must do is work to encourage students and ourselves to think critically about new tools (and, more importantly, the tools we already use).

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Virtual Working: getting comfortable with the new normal 

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Virtual Working: getting comfortable with the new normal 

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The Oxford Group

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There are three central elements to remote working: the technology, the social aspects and the work itself.

The pioneers of working from home were freelancers, exploring what was possible on big and unwieldy personal computers in the early days of the internet. They made the most of the emerging technology. The social issues quickly became prominent: some people soon felt lonely and isolated, and leaders were not confident that good creative or innovative work was being done. People missed face-to-face collaboration.

Then there was the work itself. The sort of work you do in an office with people around you is not the same as the work you do on your own. Virtual working has to be considered (and managed) differently.

The encouraging news is that this current pandemic is not the first time that big external events have forced a change. There have been different waves of virtual working since the 1980s.

In the first wave, in the 1980s, companies like Elance (later Upwork) grew up, platform companies which experimented with taking work out of the office. Independent consultants and freelancers may have loved the new-found autonomy and flexibility, but worried about being part of a community. They recognised that you learn by watching others in the workplace, Gratton argued, picking up tacit knowledge working in proximity with others.

The second wave in the early 2000s saw virtual working becoming integral to the corporation. We all started to have virtual corporate colleagues. And again external events such as 9/11 or the Sars outbreak of 2003 made a difference to the way we saw the workplace and our need to be rooted in it. "We never went back to exactly how we worked before," says Professor Gratton. "Today is not a blip."

As virtual/remote working matured other questions arose. "Work anywhere anytime" sounded great. New collaborative communications tools such as Slack arrived and some managers were comfortable about having colleagues at home. But were they less engaged? Did productivity suffer? Was it a case of "out of sight, out of mind"? The pressing concern was: how do you manage people who are working from home and how do you measure their productivity and performance?

Professor Gratton described a substantial experiment conducted by the UK telecoms company BT in her book The Shift. BT studied two groups of workers, half of whom were based in the office and the other half at home. And they were measured for levels of engagement, retention and productivity.

Very quickly, at home, workers' productivity deteriorated. They didn't know how to use the technology, and didn't know how to work together. This got better over time. Collaboration improved. And in some teams their performance was higher. Working from home could actually boost productivity. The lesson is: you have to learn very quickly how to make working from home work.

The most recent wave of virtual working (as Professor Gratton explored in this 2013 Harvard Business Review article) was marked by the widespread adoption of low-cost collaborative tools, with companies joining everybody up and forming armies of virtual co-workers. This
would not have been possible 10 years earlier as it was prohibitively expensive, and slow.

But again the problem of loneliness and isolation arose. Co-working hubs were established in smaller towns, recreating (in a sense) mini offices away from the main office. People like to work together. We are social animals. There are implications for our mental health and relationships with others in being too isolated.

We're now at the start of a mass experiment. "We've had asynchronous home-working in the past: some people doing it some of the time," says Professor Gratton. "Now it's everybody all of the time - a synchronous process."

Six actions for leaders to take now

Follow these six steps today, suggests Professor Gratton, to make remote working a success for you and your organisation:

1. Invest in intuitive technology. Make sure it's easy to use, match the tech to the task and use video as much as you can. Experiment with 'big conversations' - invest in bringing people together at scale.

2. Consider the social aspects. Perhaps some home-workers are already feeling isolated after just a few days. How will they feel in three months' time?

3. Reimagine the home workspace. Find a place to work with few distractions - a dedicated space - and leave it when work is finished. As the BT experiment showed, it helps to get working conditions right as soon as you can. Talking about emotions is going to be important. Use emojis!

4. Make it human. Use "high-fidelity" (high quality) communication channels as much as possible. Video is especially powerful, recreating the face-to-face experience. And build in virtual "water-cooler conversations" that are not about work. Why not establish a regular coffee break which you share together, or a Friday cocktail hour?

5. Establish a rhythm. Have a group meeting at 9am, perhaps again at 4pm. Team meetings are going to be really crucial. Build in structure. (Just as projects also need structure: a kick-off phase, onboarding and milestones.) In projects carried out by virtual teams people need to get to know who the other colleagues are. There is also the issue of childcare. Work might need to be scheduled to fit around family as opposed to the other way around.

6. Focus on collaboration and trust. The question of culture inevitably arises. People don't necessarily trust each other at first. So build it in. Trust your co-workers until they are proven to be untrustworthy.

One of the reasons working from home did not truly take off in the past was that leaders didn't do it. They feared people were skiving. But now leaders are working from home too.

As a leader, you need to understand what your people are doing. Listen on a daily basis to the stories they are telling you. Show empathy to yourself and the people you are leading. Change protocols, reformat work, reformat the home, to create more resilient working practices.

"This is our opportunity to do that," Professor Gratton says. "Trust that people are doing the best they can." She feels confident that changes introduced now will last. Habits form over a period of time and three months is long enough for new habits to form. Video will get established. We are just not going to be in the office so much.

"Bigger issues are at play here," as she points out. "Where does the post-pandemic world want to be?"

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Working virtually? You're not alone | London Business School

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There are three central elements to remote working: the technology, the social aspects and the work itself. The pioneers of working from home were freelancers, exploring what was possible on big and unwieldy personal computers in the early days of the internet. They made the most of the emerging technology.

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Professor Rupert Brown explain Social Identity Theory and why it matters

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Professor Rupert Brown explain Social Identity Theory and why it matters

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search for positive distinctiveness

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Professor Rupert Brown explain Social Identity Theory and why it matters

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You have an important assignment that must be completed tomorrow and two people on staff who are ideally suited to handle it. Because the office is closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both are working from home. One is single and the other has two school-aged children at home.

Getty

Who will get the opportunity to shine? If you immediately chose the single person without giving the matter serious consideration, then you may be demonstrating unconscious bias.

We all have unrecognized stereotypes-influenced by our surroundings, our upbringings, and those around us-that lead us to form instinctive judgments about others. Left unchecked, unconscious bias can determine many choices that we make in our everyday work, from the way we allocate tasks to how we manage challenging situations. It can creep into even the most inclusive teams, especially during periods of uncertainty or increased stress like we're facing now.

Leaders need to be aware that when teams are working from home and conducting routine business through calls and virtual meetings, they need to be especially alert to bias and avoid making assumptions about their team members. Hearing a child in the background or seeing a pet stroll on camera should have no influence on the business at hand. It also helps to remember that nuance and body language don't necessarily translate well via video conference.

Now, more than ever, leaders need to:

Challenge your own assumptions. Don't assume that certain team members are taking on most of the domestic duties and caring responsibilities in their households. Or that some team members feel less stress. Every person and situation deserve to be understood without preconceived notions of what you may consider "typical."

Separate bias from assignment, promotion, or compensation outcomes. Be careful to provide opportunities fairly, and avoid relying exclusively on your inner network or team members who are most accessible to you. Take time to appreciate what your team members are capable of alongside their other responsibilities, and ensure that your perception of the impact of their caregiving responsibilities do not unduly influence assignment opportunities.

Check in.Hold regular conversations with each team member to find out how assignments are unfolding and whether there have been any changes to individual circumstances. During these and all interactions, demonstrate empathy and understanding so that team members feel comfortable discussing any challenges.

Include people who may feel isolated.Arrange team calls for times that accommodate as many team members as possible and try to avoid times when family circumstances are most likely to disrupt work schedules.

Set expectations and boundaries with clear and transparent guidelines for communicating and meeting deadlines. Have individual discussions with all team members about when and where they will work, what support they need and the kinds of assignments they feel they can manage in the current environment. Try to focus on output and quality as the primary metrics of success, rather than hours or availability.

Prioritize creative ways to provide continued development opportunities. Create opportunities for your team to continue to learn and grow virtually, and work with them to identify online training and development opportunities that can develop their skills.

Unconscious bias isn't unique to our pandemic-shaped world. We should always try to recognize and avoid any prejudices. But working virtually brings different challenges-and potentially reveals new, underlying assumptions that can damage the effective functioning of your team. Being cognizant about unconscious bias can make us more thoughtful about our interactions and the opportunities we offer to our people.

Regardless of the circumstances, everyone deserves a chance to shine.

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Deloitte BrandVoice: Avoiding Bias In The Virtual Workplace

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You have an important assignment that must be completed tomorrow and two people on staff who are ideally suited to handle it. Because the office is closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both are working from home. One is single and the other has two school-aged children at home.

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Leading Through Uncertainty: Six Ways To Navigate The Unchartered

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Leading Through Uncertainty: Six Ways To Navigate The Unchartered

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If ever the phrase "VUCA" (the acronym for the v olatile, uncertain, complex and nature of today's world) felt appropriate to use, it's now.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 10: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on ... [+]
Getty Images

With no playbook for how best to respond to the rapidly evolving concerns about novel coronavirus, Covid-19, many decision makers are grappling to strike the right balance between prudent cautiousness and panicked over-reaction. With so many unknowns, playing it "extra-safe" is arguably a sensible response. Yet playing it too safe comes with its own risks.

Navigating the uncertainty of the path ahead in ways that minimize the ongoing fall out will require all who occupy leadership roles to keep fear in check and rethink risk beyond its usual parameters. While there will eventually be many case studies of this turbulent time, it's my hope the suggestions to follow will help those in charge take better care of those in their charge - with more calm and courage, less panic and fear.

1- Reassure: Role model 'Self-certainty'

"I'd rather just get coronavirus and be done with it than go through all this anxious speculation," a global health consultant told me last week. The take-away - people hate uncertainty. Uncertainty about the potential of an undesirable event often causes more angst than the event itself.

All leadership begins with self-leadership. Given the immense uncertainty around coronavirus, it's vital that leaders are conscious about showing up in ways that dial down anxiety, not stoke it. You can do this by role modeling what psychologists call "self-certainty" - something you can build by being grounded in internal values - such as integrity, optimism, community, courage, purpose, compassion. Research shows that people with high levels of self-certainty are better at remaining calm in adversity than those whose identity is drawn from external values such as professional status, fame or financial assets. Stanford University found that 'attitude certainty' provides a type of psychological safety net that can help us keep fear in check in uncertain and turbulent times like these.

As headlines drive up the fear factor, people are hungry for reassurance that everything is going to be okay despite. They are looking upward for the certainty they lack.

So think of yourself as an emotional barometer, setting the emotional temperature for those in your charge, giving them cues for how they should respond.

If you're anxious and stressing out, your fear will spread like a virus into your team and organization, posing a greater threat to future success than any external one. David Rock of the NeuroLeadership Institute has found that our level of anxiety has an inverse relationship to our level of cognition. The more stressed you are, the less smart you think. The less smart others will think also.

On the flip side, if your demeanor is reassured and calm, you'll reassure others to stay calm and, in turn, help them make smarter decisions.

Grounding yourself in self-certainty requires being crystal clear of the values you want to embody as a leader and then prioritizing what empowers you to role-model them. With so many factors outside of control, it's vital to manage those within it. So if you think you've got too much on your plate to prioritize activities that keep you grounded in self-certainty, consider that you have too much on your plate not to.

As I shared in this previous column, the more pressure we're under, the more deliberate we must be to prioritize what strengthens us and keeps stress in check. Showing up with optimism and empathy, grounded in your innate capacity to meet the challenges ahead will reassure others to do the same. Just keep in mind, people will always be more influenced by the power of your example than the example of your power.

2- Foster connection: Rally employees behind a shared sense of purpose

While visiting my family in rural Australia in January, I found myself doing the unexpected - packing up my parents' belongings to evacuate bushfires. While it was an anxious period, my family later agreed that it was "the worst of times and the best of times." While it was a far cry from the vacation I'd envisaged, it rallied my family together around a common purpose - to safeguard each other against the threat of fire - that strengthened our familial bonds in special ways.

Right now, the employees in your charge are feeling very confronted by a common threat. While they may not be coming together physically due to the nature of this threat, letting everyone know that "We're all in this together, and we get through it together" can build trust, grow loyalty and strengthen bonds in ways that can never be done in calmer times.

3- Act inclusively: Lead from the heart, not just the head

Relationships are the currency of influence in any workplace. The stronger a leader's emotional connection with employees, the better placed they'll be to get employees pulling behind them. So it's vital to lead from the heart, not just the head, ensuring that everyone feels a sense of belonging and no-one is left feeling left "outside the fold." As Cindy Hook, CEO of Deloitte Asia Pacific wrote in an on LinkedIn:
"At times like these, we must avoid finger pointing, stereotyping, and isolating others, which only serves to exacerbate the current situation. Let's remember our battle here should be human vs virus, not human vs human."
Nothing demonstrates how genuinely you care about people more than prioritizing their personal wellbeing over commercial profits. If, in the course of executing austerity measures people are left feeling that they are just numbers on a spreadsheet - human doings vs human beings - rather than real people with families no less precious to them as yours is to you, the damage done to trust will reap a steep hidden tax on the bottom line long after this virus has come and gone.

So prioritize your people. Make yourself visible and connect in unscripted and authentic ways. While tightly crafted memos have their place, nothing beats a personal touch, going out of your way to let people know you care. Pick up the phone. Write a note. Visit the shop floor where appropriate. Do a virtual Town Hall which everyone can watch live or view later. Most of all, ask people how they're doing and how you can support them. People want to know you're in the trenches with them and that you've got their back.

4- Risk Over-Communication: Bring everyone along, each step of the way

Conspiracy theories and wild-rumors quickly run rampant in the vacuum of not-knowing. The void of information around coronavirus has pulled many people into fear-casting - catastrophizing doomsday like scenarios and acting irrationally. The lack of toilet paper on store shelves around the world indicates many still are.

As a Singapore based CEO, recalling the lessons he learnt from the SARS epidemic, "The most important thing is to be up front, on point and transparent about what we are doing and why." So get ahead of your organization's rumour mill and issue regular updates on exactly what is going on and your plans for handling them.

"It's important to keep conversations focused on facts and data," explained the Managing Director of a global supply chain and logistics corporation in an article by EgonZender. "Once you open the door to speculation, irrational behavior and panic sets in."

And when your plans and approach changes, which it inevitably will amid the fluidity of the unfolding coronavirus situation, explain why and how. People know you have no playbook. Be transparent with them.

5- Show Decisiveness: Beware of waiting for clarity

Auto-chief Lee Iacocca once said, "The one word that makes a good manager-decisiveness." But let's face it, when dealing with a void of reliable information and immense ambiguity, making a decision can just trigger more anxiety. However, as I wrote in this previous column, while waiting a little longer can feel like the sensible option, the price we pay for putting off a decision often outweighs the benefits gained by simply committing to a course of action. Indecision may feel safe in the short term, but it ultimately just leaves people feeling less secure, not more so.

So make the best decisions you can right now, with what you currently know. Then, when you know more, make a new decision. Just don't let fear of making a wrong decision keep you from making any decision. People need bold decisive leadership right now, not wavering and timidity.

6- Practice Agility: Build organizational resilience

Necessity is hailed as the mother of invention and at times like this, it's imperative to be more inventive in how you do business. For me, this has meant equipping my home office to lead more virtual programs and livestream webinar presentations to support leaders and build resilience that people can participate in from anywhere their own homes ( you can learn about them here.) For you, it may be changing your purchasing terms, flexible work arrangements, communication processes, or sick-care policies.

As Kipling Partners ' Gaby Riddington, who coaches CEO's across the Asia Pacific Region, shared with me:
"Leaders who are being proactive in finding creative ways to solve logistical challenges and brainstorming new approaches are those whose organizations will emerge the other side of this crisis more agile, more competitive and better off."
Find ways of using this crisis as a catalyst for doing business better. For innovating, reengineering, getting closer to customers and more creative with distribution, marketing, internal communications. Use this time in ways that will serve your stakeholders well long after this virus has been contained.

Einstein once observed that our most significant problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking at which they were created. The global outbreak of Covid-19 presents a significant problem. Amid its volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity lays hidden opportunities for learning, reinvention, and evolution - at the individual, organizational and societal levels.

Given that all exceptional leadership begins with self-leadership, now is a prime time for leaders at every level to elevate their thinking and ground themselves in the values that define the leader they aspire to be. Compassionate. Calm. Courageous.

After all, when fear runs high, the need for courage runs higher.

If history has taught us anything, it's that the worst of times can bring out the best in people - individually and collectively - stretching us to think more broadly and advance more intelligently. Let's focus on doing just that.
A on leadership, Margie is offering virtual programs to help organizations manage this crisis with greater resilience and courage. She has also just released her fifth book You've Got This! The Life-Changing Power of Trusting Yourself.
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Leading Through Uncertainty: Six Ways To Navigate The Unchartered

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If ever the phrase "VUCA" (the acronym for the v olatile, uncertain, complex and nature of today's world) felt appropriate to use, it's now. With no playbook for how best to respond to the rapidly evolving concerns about novel coronavirus, Covid-19, many decision makers are grappling to strike the right balance between prudent cautiousness and panicked over-reaction.

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Wordwall - Create better lessons quicker

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Need a fresh teaching resource that fits your class and teaching style? Create a customized pack of interactive and printable activities in just one minute.

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A visually structured approach to learning design to think through and support your students’ learning

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Free Skills, Job and Career Growth Learning - SkillsBuild Program - IBM.org

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IBM SkillsBuild connects adult learners with a curated path of job-focused learning, supported by organizations that address their specific needs

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The ETF’s Essential Digital Skills workforce development programme returns

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The ETF’s Essential Digital Skills workforce development programme returns

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18Aug20

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Further Education News

The FE News Channel gives you the latest education news and updates on emerging education strategies and the #FutureofEducation and the #FutureofWork.

Providing trustworthy and positive Further Education news and views since 2003, we are a digital news channel with a mixture of written word articles, podcasts and videos. Our specialisation is providing you with a mixture of the latest education news, our stance is always positive, sector building and sharing different perspectives and views from thought leaders, to provide you with a think tank of new ideas and solutions to bring the education sector together and come up with new innovative solutions and ideas.

FE News publish exclusive peer to peer thought leadership articles from our feature writers, as well as user generated content across our network of over 3000 Newsrooms, offering multiple sources of the latest education news across the Education and Employability sectors.

FE News also broadcast live events, podcasts with leading experts and thought leaders, webinars, video interviews and Further Education news bulletins so you receive the latest developments in Skills News and across the Apprenticeship, Further Education and Employability sectors.

Every week FE News has over 200 articles and new pieces of content per week. We are a news channel providing the latest Further Education News, giving insight from multiple sources on the latest education policy developments, latest strategies, through to our thought leaders who provide blue sky thinking strategy, best practice and innovation to help look into the future developments for education and the future of work.

In May 2020, FE News had over 120,000 unique visitors according to Google Analytics and over 200 new pieces of news content every week, from thought leadership articles, to the latest education news via written word, podcasts, video to press releases from across the sector.

We thought it would be helpful to explain how we tier our latest education news content and how you can get involved and understand how you can read the latest daily Further Education news and how we structure our FE Week of content:

Main Features

Our main features are exclusive and are thought leadership articles and blue sky thinking with experts writing peer to peer news articles about the future of education and the future of work. The focus is solution led thought leadership, sharing best practice, innovation and emerging strategy. These are often articles about the future of education and the future of work, they often then create future education news articles. We limit our main features to a maximum of 20 per week, as they are often about new concepts and new thought processes. Our main features are also exclusive articles responding to the latest education news, maybe an insight from an expert into a policy announcement or response to an education think tank report or a white paper.

FE Voices

FE Voices was originally set up as a section on FE News to give a voice back to the sector. As we now have over 3,000 newsrooms and contributors, FE Voices are usually thought leadership articles, they don't necessarily have to be exclusive, but usually are, they are slightly shorter than Main Features. FE Voices can include more mixed media with the Further Education News articles, such as embedded podcasts and videos. Our sector response articles asking for different comments and opinions to education policy announcements or responding to a report of white paper are usually held in the FE Voices section. If we have a live podcast in an evening or a radio show such as SkillsWorldLive radio show, the next morning we place the FE podcast recording in the FE Voices section.

Sector News

In sector news we have a blend of content from Press Releases, education resources, reports, education research, white papers from a range of contributors. We have a lot of positive education news articles from colleges, awarding organisations and Apprenticeship Training Providers, press releases from DfE to Think Tanks giving the overview of a report, through to helpful resources to help you with delivering education strategies to your learners and students.

Podcasts

We have a range of education podcasts on FE News, from hour long full production FE podcasts such as SkillsWorldLive in conjunction with the Federation of Awarding Bodies, to weekly podcasts from experts and thought leaders, providing advice and guidance to leaders. FE News also record podcasts at conferences and events, giving you one on one podcasts with education and skills experts on the latest strategies and developments.

We have over 150 education podcasts on FE News, ranging from EdTech podcasts with experts discussing Education 4.0 and how technology is complimenting and transforming education, to podcasts with experts discussing education research, the future of work, how to develop skills systems for jobs of the future to interviews with the Apprenticeship and Skills Minister.

We record our own exclusive FE News podcasts, work in conjunction with sector partners such as FAB to create weekly podcasts and daily education podcasts, through to working with sector leaders creating exclusive education news podcasts.

Education Video Interviews

FE News have over 700 FE Video interviews and have been recording education video interviews with experts for over 12 years. These are usually vox pop video interviews with experts across education and work, discussing blue sky thinking ideas and views about the future of education and work.

Events

FE News has a free events calendar to check out the latest conferences, webinars and events to keep up to date with the latest education news and strategies.

FE Newsrooms

The FE Newsroom is home to your content if you are a FE News contributor. It also help the audience develop relationship with either you as an individual or your organisation as they can click through and 'box set' consume all of your previous thought leadership articles, latest education news press releases, videos and education podcasts.

Do you want to contribute, share your ideas or vision or share a press release?

If you want to write a thought leadership article, share your ideas and vision for the future of education or the future of work, write a press release sharing the latest education news or contribute to a podcast, first of all you need to set up a FE Newsroom login (which is free): once the team have approved your newsroom (all content, newsrooms are all approved by a member of the FE News team- no robots are used in this process!), you can then start adding content (again all articles, videos and podcasts are all approved by the FE News editorial team before they go live on FE News). As all newsrooms and content are approved by the FE News team, there will be a slight delay on the team being able to review and approve content.

RSS Feed Selection Page

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The ETF's Essential Digital Skills workforce development programme returns

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The Education and Training Foundation (@E_T_Foundation), the workforce development body for the FE and Training sector, has launched the next phase of its popular CPD programme to prepare sector staff to teach new fully-funded essential digital skills courses for adult learners. The launch follows the government's recent announcement of Digital...

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Get a strong foundation in digital accessibility to make your websites and apps work well for people with disabilities, meet international standards, and provide a better user experience for everyone.

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"There is no such thing as a neutral educational process." ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Pedagogy is not ideologically neutral." This line has been for me almost a mantra over the last several years. I've said variations of it on Twitter, on the About Us page of Hybrid Pedagogy, and in our recent CFP focused on Critical Digital Pedagogy. I've circled around this phrase, because I feel increasingly certain that the word "pedagogy" has been misread - that the project of education has been misdirected - that educators and students alike have found themselves more and more flummoxed by a system that values assessment over engagement, learning management over discovery, content over community, outcomes over epiphanies. Education (and, to an even greater extent, edtech) has misrepresented itself as objective, quantifiable, apolitical.

Higher education teaching is particularly uncritical and under-theorized. Most college educators (at both traditional and non-traditional institutions) do little direct pedagogical work to prepare themselves as teachers. A commitment to teaching often goes unrewarded, and pedagogical writing (in most fields) is not counted as "research."

The entire enterprise of education is too often engaged in teaching that is not pedagogical. There are a whole host of other words I'd use to describe this work: instruction, classroom management, training, outcomes-driven, standards-based, content delivery. Pedagogy, on the other hand, starts with learning as its center, not students or teachers, and the work of pedagogues is necessarily political, subjective, and humane.

What is Critical Pedagogy?

Critical Pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning predicated on fostering agency and empowering learners (implicitly and explicitly critiquing oppressive power structures). The word "critical" in Critical Pedagogy functions in several registers:

Critical, as in mission-critical, essential;

Critical, as in literary criticism and critique, providing definitions and interpretation;

Critical, as in reflective and nuanced thinking about a subject;

Critical, as in criticizing institutional, corporate, or societal impediments to learning;

Critical Pedagogy, as a disciplinary approach, which inflects (and is inflected by) each of these other meanings.

Each of these registers distinguishes Critical Pedagogy from pedagogy; however, the current educational climate has made the terms, for me, increasingly coterminous (i.e. an ethical pedagogy must be a critical one). Pedagogy is praxis, insistently perched at the intersection between the philosophy and the practice of teaching. When teachers talk about teaching, we are not necessarily doing pedagogical work, and not every teaching method constitutes a pedagogy. Rather, pedagogy necessarily involves recursive, second-order, meta-level work. Teachers teach; pedagogues teach while also actively investigating teaching and learning. Critical Pedagogy suggests a specific kind of anti-capitalist, liberatory praxis. This is deeply personal and political work, through which pedagogues cannot and do not remain objective. Rather, pedagogy, and particularly Critical Pedagogy, is work to which we must bring our full selves, and work to which every learner must come with full agency.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire argues against the banking model, in which education "becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor." This model emphasizes a one-sided transactional relationship, in which teachers are seen as content experts and students are positioned as sub-human receptacles. The use here of "sub-human" is intentional and not exaggeration; for in the tenets set out in Freire's work (and the work of other Critical Pedagogues, including bell hooks and Henry Giroux), the banking model of education is part and parcel with efforts most clearly summed up in the term dehumanization. The banking model of education is efficient in that it maintains order and is bureaucratically neat and tidy. But efficiency, when it comes to teaching and learning, is not worth valorizing. Schools are not factories, nor are learning or learners products of the mill.

I immediately become deeply skeptical when I hear the word "content" in a discussion about education, particularly when it is accompanied by the word "packaged." It is not that education is without content altogether, but that its content is co-constructed as part of and not in advance of the learning.

Critical Pedagogy is concerned less with knowing and more with a voracious not-knowing. It is an on-going and recursive process of discovery. For Freire, "Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other." Here, the language echoes the sort of learning Freire describes. With a flurry of adjectives and clauses separated by commas, his sentence circles around its subject, wandering, pushing restlessly at the edges of how words make meaning - not directly through literal translation into concepts, but in the way words rub curiously against one another, making meaning through a kind of friction. Knowledge emerges in the interplay between multiple people in conversation - brushing against one another in a mutual and charged exchange or dialogue. Freire writes, "Authentic education is not carried on by 'A' for 'B' or by 'A' about 'B,' but rather by 'A' with 'B'." It is through this impatient dialogue, and the implicit collaboration within it, that Critical Pedagogy finds its impetus toward change.

In place of the banking model, Freire advocates for "problem-posing education," in which a classroom or learning environment becomes a space for asking questions - a space of cognition not information. Vertical (or hierarchical) relationships give way to more playful ones, in which students and teachers co-author together the parameters for their individual and collective learning. Problem-posing education offers a space of mutual creation not consumption. In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks writes, "As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another's voices, in recognizing one another's presence." This is a lively and intimate space of creativity and inquiry - a space of listening as much as speaking.

What is Critical Digital Pedagogy?

My work has wondered at the extent to which Critical Pedagogy translates into digital space. Can the necessary reflective dialogue flourish within web-based tools, within social media platforms, within learning management systems, within MOOCs? What is digital agency? To what extent can social media function as a space of democratic participation? How can we build platforms that support learning across age, race, culture, gender, ability, geography? What are the specific affordances and limitations of technology toward these ends? If, indeed, all learning is necessarily hybrid, as I've argued, to what extent are Critical Pedagogy and digital pedagogy becoming also coterminous?

The wondering at these questions is, in fact, not particularly new. In his forward to Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Richard Shaull writes, "Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of most of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system [...] The paradox is that the same technology that does this to us also creates a new sensitivity to what is happening." And, John Dewey writes in Schools of To-Morrow, published decades earlier, "Unless the mass of workers are to be blind cogs and pinions in the apparatus they employ, they must have some understanding of the physical and social facts behind and ahead of the material and appliances with which they are dealing." If we are to keep every educative endeavor from becoming mill-work - from becoming only a reflection of oppressive labor practices and uneven power relationships - we must engage deeply with its reality.

Increasingly, the web is a space of politics, a social space, a professional space, a space of community. And, for better or worse, more and more of our learning is happening there. For many of us, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between our real selves and our virtual selves, and in fact, these distinctions are being altogether unsettled. In "The New Learning is Ancient", Kathi Inman Berens writes, "It doesn't matter to me if my classroom is a little rectangle in a building or a little rectangle above my keyboard. Doors are rectangles; rectangles are portals. We walk through." When we learn online, our feet are usually still quite literally on ground. When we interact with a group of students via streaming video, the interaction is nevertheless face-to-face. The web is asking us to reimagine how we think about space, how and where we engage, and upon which platforms the bulk of our learning happens.

In Small Pieces Loosely Joined: a Unified Theory of the Web, David Weinberger writes, "We are the true 'small pieces' of the Web, and we are loosely joining ourselves in ways that we're still inventing." Ten years ago, following the publication of Weinberger's book, I wouldn't have imagined the learning networks I have now built with colleagues working together (sometimes simultaneously in real time) in places as seemingly remote as Portland, Madison, Manchester, Prince Edward Island, Sydney, Cairo, and Hong Kong.

This is not to say, however, that there aren't challenges to this sort of work. In On Critical Pedagogy, Henry Giroux argues,

Intellectuals have a responsibility to analyze how language, information, and meaning work to organize, legitimate, and circulate values, structure reality, and offer up particular notions of agency and identity. For public intellectuals, the latter challenge demands a new kind of literacy and critical understanding with respect to the emergence of the new media and electronic technologies, and the new and powerful role they play as instruments of public pedagogy.

Most digital technology, like social media or collaborative writing platforms or MOOCs, does not have its values coded into it in advance. These are tools merely, good only insofar as they are used. And platforms that do dictate too strongly how we might use them, or ones that remove our agency by too covertly reducing us and our work to commodified data, should be rooted out by a Critical Digital Pedagogy. Far too much work in educational technology starts with tools, when what we need to start with is humans.

We are better users of technology when we are thinking critically about the nature and effects of that technology. What we must do is work to encourage students and ourselves to think critically about new tools (and, more importantly, the tools we already use). And when we're looking for solutions, what we most need to change is our thinking and not our tools.

In short, Critical Digital Pedagogy:

centers its practice on community and collaboration;

must remain open to diverse, international voices, and thus requires invention to reimagine the ways that communication and collaboration happen across cultural and political boundaries;

will not, cannot, be defined by a single voice but must gather together a cacophony of voices;

must have use and application outside traditional institutions of education.

A Critical Digital Pedagogy demands that open and networked educational environments must not be merely repositories of content. They must be platforms for engaging students and teachers as full agents of their own learning.

Pete Rorabaugh writes in " Occupy the Digital: Critical Pedagogy and New Media ":

Critical Pedagogy, no matter how we define it, has a central place in the discussion of how learning is changing in the 21st century because Critical Pedagogy is primarily concerned with an equitable distribution of power. If students live in a culture that digitizes and educates them through a screen, they require an education that empowers them in that sphere, teaches them that language, and offers new opportunities of human connectivity.

Critical Pedagogy is as much a political approach as it is an educative one. As Sean Michael Morris writes, it is "a social justice movement first, and an educational movement second."

So, Critical Digital Pedagogy must also be a method of resistance and humanization. It is not simply work done in the mind, on paper, or on screen. It is work that must be done on the ground. It is not ashamed of its rallying cry or its soapbox. Critical Digital Pedagogy eats aphorisms - like this one right here - for breakfast. But it is not afraid to incite, to post its manifestos, to light its torches.
On November 21 at the OpenEd Conference in Washington, DC, Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel will present on critical digital pedagogy and MOOCs. This is the first of three articles that inspired that talk.

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We are better users of technology when we are thinking critically about the nature and effects of that technology. What we must do is work to encourage students and ourselves to think critically about new tools (and, more importantly, the tools we already use).

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An Exploratory Study of Transformative Learning and Distance Education: The Learners' Experience

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An Exploratory Study of Transformative Learning and Distance Education: The Learners' Experience

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An Exploratory Study of Transformative Learning and Distance Education: The Learners' Experience

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An Exploratory Study of Transformative Learning and Distance Education: The Learners' Experience

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Online Education in FE and skills: learning about what works

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Online Education in FE and skills: learning about what works

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Paul Joyce HMI, 15 July20

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Paul Joyce, Deputy Director for Further Education and Skills, talks about our review into online education during coronavirus (COVID-19) in the further education and skills (FES) sector.
To combat the COVID-19 pandemic, social-distancing measures were implemented in late March. For the FES sector, this meant that colleges and other providers closed their doors to all but the most vulnerable learners and children of key workers. Education and learning continued remotely, in part through a range of online and other distance-learning resources, including webinars and tele-conferencing.

In light of this, we wanted to understand how FES providers and their learners were getting on with remote and online education. The FES sector was also keen for us to look at this in more detail. So, with their support, we carried out a review into the quality of learners' experiences of online education in a small sample of volunteer providers.

This blog sets out our main findings. I hope they are useful for colleges and other providers, providing insight on what is working and what can be improved as they plan for September 2020.

What we did

Our inspectors carried out a range of activities for the review throughout June. This included remote discussions with learners, managers and teaching/training staff, and online 'observations' of lessons, sessions and other interactions.

Inspectors asked learners about what worked well and what was not working so well in the online education they received. These were not inspections and no grades were awarded or judgements made on individual colleges or providers.

We carried out the work in a small sample of 20 volunteer colleges and other providers and we're very grateful for their cooperation. I also want to thank the Association of Colleges and Association of Employment and Learning Providers for their help and support in making this review possible. The review originated in a request from AoC and we've valued the openness and initiative we've encountered in the FES sector throughout this.

What we found: learners' experience of online education

As you might expect, learners' experiences varied considerably during this period, both across the range of providers and across subject areas in the same provider. For example, the level of face-to-face contact through video conferencing can vary considerably even between subject areas at the same provider.

Learners miss the face-to-face contact of the classroom, not only for social interaction but also for the instant feedback and opportunity to ask questions that it provides. Learners told us that using online chat during sessions does not replace the classroom experience. However, some did point out that the opportunity to send the teacher private messages is useful because it allows them to ask for help discreetly. Some learners find online education more convenient and easier than face-to-face communication. Indeed, some learners who were previously anxious about attending college have re-engaged. Some pointed to the convenience and immediacy of online communication, while others valued the reduced travelling time and cost.

In many cases, staff speak to learners as frequently as they did when in college before the pandemic. Online lessons often involve splitting classes into smaller groups so that learners get similar amounts of tuition and pastoral time as before. But this also puts demands on staff and increases workload.

Some apprentices reported more time spent with their assessors and have found this valuable. Given that there has been less travel time, some assessors said they have been able to devote more time to apprentices' learning and progress by using online communication.

Generally speaking, learners at levels 1 and 2 have engaged less well than those at level 3. Learners at levels 1 and 2 often find it harder to engage with the technology necessary for online learning.

Some attempts at online learning result in learners becoming disengaged. In the weaker cases, teachers just read through their slide presentations and other resources verbatim, without adding any commentary, which meant that some learners lost interest.

Learners prefer 'live' online lessons, where they can interact with the teacher and with one another, rather than recorded lessons. Teachers and managers also said that engagement is higher when live online lessons are available and remote learning is more interactive. Splitting classes has made for more manageable live lessons, potentially allowing for more interaction with fewer learners.

Teachers do not always use online learning sessions effectively to check on and develop learning. For example, tutors often use online chat functions to replace what would ordinarily be a group discussion. Although this is responsive to some learners' preferences, it slows down the pace of the session. It also makes it difficult for learners to produce detailed answers to questions and means that some learners contribute little to discussions. Learners who do make use of voice channels during sessions benefit from the ability to talk through challenging questions in more detail and receive instant explanations from their tutors.

Some providers say their learner engagement is good because learners have logged on to online sessions. The reality may be that the learners have logged on but are doing other things, and so are not fully engaged in the live learning. Some learners admitted to being frequently distracted. Some teachers deal with this by actively checking with learners to see if they are engaged.

What we found: management of online education

There has been a major shift towards online education in the lockdown period. In several cases, learners reported a good overall experience. The success of the transition to online learning in lockdown has depended on how well prepared managers, staff and learners were and how well managers planned the transition.

The varying competence and confidence of staff with information technology has affected providers' success in making the transition to online learning. Staff training has been crucial.

The extent to which staff in subject areas had engaged with and developed approaches to online and remote learning in advance of COVID-19 affected progress during lockdown. The progress that needed to be made in any given provider varied significantly across subject areas.

Strategic planning and oversight of online learning in providers had a major impact on learners' experiences. Some providers had used many different software and platforms across subject areas, but these did not necessarily work together to provide a consistently good online educational experience for learners. Materials were often non-interactive and teachers did not always use them well to help learners learn more. Some providers had not made clear the role of their current virtual learning environments as part of the overall learning experience before lockdown.

Providers have shown ingenuity in enabling learners to carry out practical work at home, where it is safe to do this, although the quality of learners' practical skills remains largely untested. For learners who have special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) or high needs, there has often been a focus on learning activities they can carry out in their own homes. In hairdressing, some teachers have made extensive use of manufacturers' videos and other resources.

Providers have sent hairdressing practice heads to many learners to use at home. Teachers and technicians have been flexible in how they carry out assessments, allowing learners to continue with projects. For example, for one fashion course, staff replaced mannequins with dolls, resulting in learners adapting skills to create small, detailed pieces.

Colleges and providers have made considerable efforts to support learners in accessing online learning, but the lack of suitable technology or connectivity at home remains a problem for a significant minority of learners. While colleges and providers have striven to make sure that learners have the means to learn online, some learners had limited or no access to a device and/or internet at home, meaning they had difficulty in doing their work.

In many cases, teaching staff and their managers have met very frequently during lockdown to discuss the programmes that they work on and to make changes to improve the provision. In one college, the supported learning team have a meeting every day, in which they discuss their learners and programmes and any safeguarding or well-being concerns they have. The college has made changes to programmes as a result of discussions at these meetings. For example, staff identified the opportunity for and the benefit of introducing an art therapy programme for their learners in supported learning. Other staff recognised how tutors can support one another with technical difficulties.

Many providers have reinforced briefings about learners keeping safe online. They have developed protocols for safeguarding in live teaching sessions to help ensure online safety. In some cases, learners receive a weekly e-safety update. This includes specific information about COVID-19. The tutorial programme and progress reviews also include this information. Post-lockdown, providers have put more information about online safety on their website and they direct learners to this.

Providers have developed protocols for safeguarding in live teaching sessions. These include:

recording sessions, which has the added benefit that staff can use the sessions again, either for learners who cannot attend the original session or for reinforcement

double-staffing, meaning the second staff member - often a learning support assistant - can provide help as well as overseeing the session

not using cameras on video-conferencing

briefing staff and learners on what not to wear when on camera and to be aware of what is in the background (or to use the applied backgrounds if the software supports this)

Our review is small, but it's clear that there is a lot to learn from how the FES sector has approached remote learning in these unusual times. While there's a degree of variability, which is to be expected, I've been impressed by the determination and tenacity of leaders in the sector and at what they've managed to achieve for learners. I hope these insights prove useful as the sector focuses on making September a success.

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Paul Joyce, Deputy Director, Further Education and Skills

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Online education in further education and skills: learning about what works

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Paul Joyce, Deputy Director for Further Education and Skills, talks about our review into online education during coronavirus (COVID-19) in the further education and skills (FES) sector.

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Adult reflection in a graduate level online distance education course.

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Adult reflection in a graduate level online distance education course.

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Adult reflection in a graduate level online distance education course.

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This study examined adult learners' ability to engage in critical reflection concerning their own learning in a graduate-level online instructional technology course. The online course was facilitated through asynchronous discussions, and the course

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Adapting the teaching cycle - a guide to online course design and delivery - available on demand 

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Adapting the teaching cycle - a guide to online course design and delivery - available on demand 

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About

About Us

Whiteboard.fi is created by Sebastian Laxell and Jaakko Virtanen, and is run by Digital Teaching Tools Finland Ltd - a Kahoot! company. We have experience in teaching and IT-management - so we know the struggle in finding good digital tools.

Certificates

FERPA Certified

COPPA Safe Harbor

California Student Privacy Certified

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Whiteboard.fi - Free online whiteboard for teachers and classrooms

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Whiteboard.fi is an instant formative assessment tool for your classroom, providing you with live feedback and immediate overview over your students.

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Pearltrees is a place to organize everything you're interested in. It lets you organize, explore and share everything you like.

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GoConqr is a personal learning environment that allows students & teachers to create, discover and share learning resources. Transform your learning and achieve your goals with GoConqr

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ThingLink: Create unique experiences with interactive images, videos & 360° media

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Easily create interactive and immersive visual experiences for online communication and learning. Start a free trial!

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We express ourselves in different ways. On Flip, you can use our simple and fun built-in camera to record your thoughts, add effects and share within your Flip group as video, audio only or text in your web browser or mobile app.

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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Your browser either doesn't support Javascript, or you've turned it off. To use Mentimeter, please make sure to turn Javascript on. How do I enable Javascript?

Whatever the situation, Mentimeter has a solution for everyone.

Create interactive presentations

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Make a meaningful impact on your organization through engagement and interaction. Make sure that decisions get made and everyone feels listened to during meetings by using Mentimeter. Host interactive workshops, sales meetings and corporate training sessions that people actually want to attend! Present ideas and ask for answers and feedback from participants.

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Mentimeter for schools and universities

Make your teaching more interactive and fun for both you and your students. Use Mentimeter to create formative assessments, spark discussions and test knowledge with fun quiz competitions. Suitable for all types of education, from primary school to higher education. Mentimeter is the perfect tool to increase classroom engagement, and also make sure that everyone's voice is heard.

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Mentimeter for Enterprises is perfect for an entire team or company who want to use Mentimeter. With plenty of extra features to make collaboration and sharing presentations with your colleagues easy, you can say goodbye to boring presentations at your organization forever.

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Mentimeter - The solution for interactive presentations

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Whatever you want to present, use Mentimeter to do it. Use Mentimeter at any even to engage large and small audiences with interactive presentations.

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Essential Digital Skills | Enhance Digital Teaching Platform

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Taking learning to the next level - the Enhance Digital Teaching Platform for teachers and trainers in the FE and Training sector

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A Summary of Projects in the OTLA Digital (North East & Cumbria) Programme

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A Summary of Projects in the OTLA Digital (North East & Cumbria) Programme

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OTLA Digital

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A Summary of Projects in the OTLA Digital (North East & Cumbria) Programme | Excellence Gateway

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A booklet containing a summary and evaluation of the work undertaken by the North East and Cumbria team as part of OTLA Digital. Five projects were awarded funding with the aim to develop outstanding teaching, learning and assessment within a variety of contexts in the further education and training sector.

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Computational Thinking (CT) is a problem solving process that includes a number of characteristics and dispositions. CT is essential to the development of computer applications, but it can also be used to support problem solving across all disciplines, including math, science, and the humanities. Students who learn CT across the curriculum can begin to see a relationship between subjects as well as between school and life outside of the classroom.

CT involves a number of skills, including:

Formulating problems in a way that enables us to use a computer and other tools to help solve them

Logically organizing and analyzing data

Representing data through abstractions such as models and simulations

Automating solutions through algorithmic thinking (a series of ordered steps)

Identifying, analyzing, and implementing possible solutions with the goal of achieving the most efficient and effective combination of steps and resources

Generalizing and transferring this problem solving process to a wide variety of problems

These skills are supported and enhanced by a number of dispositions or attitudes that include:

Confidence in dealing with complexity

Persistence in working with difficult problems

Tolerance for ambiguity

The ability to deal with open ended problems

The ability to communicate and work with others to achieve a common goal or solution

CT concepts are the mental processes (e.g. abstraction, algorithm design, decomposition, pattern recognition, etc) and tangible outcomes (e.g. automation, data representation, pattern generalization, etc) associated with solving problems in computing. These include and are defined as follows:

Abstraction: Identifying and extracting relevant information to define main idea(s)

Algorithm Design: Creating an ordered series of instructions for solving similar problems or for doing a task

Automation: Having computers or machines do repetitive tasks

Data Analysis: Making sense of data by finding patterns or developing insights

Data Collection: Gathering information

Data Representation: Depicting and organizing data in appropriate graphs, charts, words, or images

Decomposition: Breaking down data, processes, or problems into smaller, manageable parts

Parallelization: Simultaneous processing of smaller tasks from a larger task to more efficiently reach a common goal

Pattern Generalization: Creating models, rules, principles, or theories of observed patterns to test predicted outcomes

Pattern Recognition: Observing patterns, trends, and regularities in data

Simulation: Developing a model to imitate real-world processes

See our Computational Thinking Concepts Guide for a printable version of this list, along with teaching tips for each concept.

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Google for Education: Computational Thinking

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Computational thinking (CT) involves a set of problem-solving skills and techniques that software engineers use to write programs that underlie the computer applications you use such as search, email, and maps

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New legal entitlement.
- Replacing Functional ICT with Digital Functional Skills.  One year overlap. 1st teaching September 2021. Some subject specific skills. 55hrs GLH, pass/fail, demanding content relevant to work and real life.  Tests underpinning knowledge as well as application. 2 levels only, E3 & L1. Reflects how digital is changing e.g. mobile, on the go technology, everyday activity. Authentic scenarios, learners choosing their approach, techniques & tools.  Onscreen, Online.
- Other Digital qual - Essential Digital Skills available from Autumn 2020.
Different purposes and audiences.

Teaching online 14 December 2020 - Ofquals review of the barriers to greater adoption and how these might be overcome
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-and-on-screen-assessment-in-high-stakes-sessional-qualifications

Skipton Girl's School is an EdTech Demonstrator School - lots of their helpful videos on YouTube e.g. Teams Break Out Rooms

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Adults with no or low digital skills will be entitled to take Essential Digital Skills (EDS) qualifications free of charge from September 2020.                                             The Essential Digital Skills professional development programme will support teachers, trainers and leaders to deliver the new qualifications based on the national standards for Essential Digital Skills.

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Adults with no or low digital skills will be entitled to take Essential Digital Skills (EDS) qualifications free of charge from September 2020.                                             The Essential Digital Skills professional development programme will support teachers, trainers and leaders to deliver the new qualifications based on the national standards for Essential Digital Skills.

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ETF Essential Digital Skills professional development programme - online workshop

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ETF Essential Digital Skills professional development programme - online workshop

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Jan 2020 no charge

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For those who will be involved in delivering Essential Digital Skills training at Entry and Level 1 national standards to adult learners.

Attendees will be expected to disseminate their learning within their place of work.

Places available:

Up to two people for a single organisation

One person per college/site where part of a group of colleges/providers

The webinar will be delivered using zoom web conferencing software. A software download maybe required which you can download in advance. Instructions will be contained in the joining instructions emailed in advance of the webinar.

You will also need a good internet connection and a set of headphones, in-earphones (like you would use for a mobile phone or tablet), or a mic-phones headset.

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Essential Digital Skills professional development programme - online workshop

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For those who will be involved in delivering Essential Digital Skills training at Entry and Level 1 national standards to adult learners. Attendees will be expected to disseminate their learning within their place of work.

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Essential Digital Skills professional development programme - face to face training

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Essential Digital Skills professional development programme - face to face training

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Jan 2020 no charge

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Support practitioners, in developing their skills, knowledge and confidence to deliver the new Essential Digital Skills (EDS) national standards to adult learners.

The training will use a workshop approach and will focus on:

1. Assessing strengths and professional development needs to help practitioners prepare for delivering EDS

2. Exploring activities, materials and resources that support teaching of EDS competencies including:

Creating and editing digital media

Processing numerical data

Managing traceable online activities

Online transactions/ buying securely online

Digital wellbeing.

Sharing best practice and building communities of practice to support delivery of the new Essential Digital Skills entitlement offer.

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Essential Digital Skills professional development programme - face to face training

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Support practitioners, in developing their skills, knowledge and confidence to deliver the new Essential Digital Skills (EDS) national standards to adult learners. The training will use a workshop approach and will focus on: Assessing strengths and professional development needs to help practitioners prepare for delivering EDS Exploring activities, materials and resources that support teaching of EDS competencies including: Creating and editing digital media Processing numerical data Managing traceable online activities Online transactions/ buying securely online Digital wellbeing.

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Ofqual Digital Functional Skills  Qualifications - Ofqual Podcast, July 2019

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Ofqual Digital Functional Skills  Qualifications - Ofqual Podcast, July 2019

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published on

Functional Skills in ICT in England are being replaced with a new Digital Functional Skills Qualification. We're currently consulting on our regulations for this new qualification. This podcast explains more about the differences between old and new, as well as other proposals we're making, such as supporting more innovative, valid assessment of digital skills. The consultation is open until 26 July 2019 at https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/regulating-digital-functional-skills-qualifications

Genre

Business

License: all-rights-reserved

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Digital Functional Skills Qualifications - Ofqual Podcast S01E04 by The Ofqual Podcast

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Functional Skills in ICT in England are being replaced with a new Digital Functional Skills Qualification. We're currently consulting on our regulations for this new qualification. This podcast explains more about the differences between old and new, as well as other proposals we're making, such as supporting more innovative, valid assessment of digital skills.

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- Using digital technology: improving engagement in learning in maths (1 day)
- Using digital technology: improving engagement in learning in English (1 day)
- Using digital technology: improving engagement in learning in maths and English (2 days)