Teacher prep time vs Learning prep time

'Time for teacher to prepare teaching' 

vs 

'Time for teacher to prepare for learners to learn'

Recently a colleague observed a session where the teacher talked to learners for 45 minutes with a very well put together PowerPoint.  The PowerPoint included images from various websites, text that had come from respectable sources (on the internet), it also included visual effects of "spin in", and "cosmic fade".

This presentation must have taken the teacher a good couple of hours.

2 hours preparation for 45 minutes??? This is unsustainable (and also quite boring for the learner, and does not stretch & challenge, with limited checking of learning)

...so - plan for learning - don't plan for teaching.

Plan how your students can access, digest, argue, compare, contrast, communicate and justify the information that you think they "need to know"

There are 100's of ways of getting students to actively engage with this information.  

Try this:

• spend 30 minutes googling a new active learning strategy. 
• spend 30 minutes collating your information (website links, or printing chunks of information for a carousel type activity
• spend 30 minutes writing some really good stretching, challenging checking learning type questions
• spend 30 minutes drinking a glass of wine and putting your feet up, feeling smug that the you, the teacher has planned for learning.

Invest time in googling new active learning strategies and you will save yourself even more time each week!

Warning - the 'Noughties' are soon to enter FE

WARNING - the 'Noughties' are soon to enter 
Further Education

In the early Noughties (Year 2000), the internet became really wireless, social networks blossomed and mobile phones/laptops/tablets, with all of their wizzardry and apps, started to take pride of place in our homes.


Both my children were born in the opening few years of the Noughties, just after the year of the "millennium bug".  Both have never experienced the world without google.  Both, (aged 11 and 133/4) have their own laptops, tablets, youtube accounts, mobile phones, socialise on instagram, and most importantly have access to google.

Last weekend, just before I was about to leave the house, one of my children wanted to learn how to use Logic 9, a complex music software package I wrestle with on a regular basis.  I could afford 2 minutes of my time - "click here", "make sure you have this turned on", "drag that there". . .  and I jumped in the car and whizzed off; they were left to fend for themselves.

30 minutes later I had a phone call in the car.

"Dad, how do you email to someone the music that you have written?"

There are numerous buttons to click, things to check, things to drag over etc - it's just not something that can easily be explained over the phone whilst driving!

"Sorry, I can't talk you through it . . . . Just google it . . . . good luck!" I replied. 

3 hours later I returned home.  They had googled it.  They had googled several other instructions and watched other kids & adults completing the processes on Youtube and learnt how to do it themselves.  They had then added this music to their own titles in another video editing package, finally mixed the two together and proudly uploaded to youtube for all "8 subscribers", and the whole world to see.

So, is the teacher now redundant?  
Has the precious moments of child listening to father pouring out knowledge been lost?
Does anyone need to "know" stuff anymore?
Why should the teacher test the memory of knowledge, when it is not needed?

My thoughts?

In 2015, most knowledge does not need to be remembered and instantly recalled; yes, some does, but only small amounts as we have it all at the press of a button on our phones (or even a 'spoken instruction' - "Hey google, can you find . . .?"

So why teach knowledge and why test it?

Our teachers needs to be ready for the "naughties learner". Teachers have to be the facilitator, the inquisitor, the kindling; rather the brimming bottle of knowledge ready to fill the empty vessel.


So let's make sure that when the "Naughties learner" start to turn up on our FE door step (in just another 8 months time), we are prepared for a learner who already knows how to "find out stuff" for themselves, if and when they need it.  Let's make sure that we don't fall into the teachers trap of teaching "stuff" and transferring knowledge.  

We now have the amazing possibility of spending time with our learners, not teaching them "stuff" ("stuff" we teach and then test to see if they were listening , yet we are sure they will never need again!), but engaging with them in thinking, inquiring, investigating, arguing, justifying, creating, experimenting, summarising and most importantly, communicating.  After all, communication is the skill that is used in nearly every part of employment - regardless of technology!

Bring on those "Noughties" children!