Research Assessment Exercise in Pain English
December 20th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
A great new video by AJ Cann on the Research Assessment Exercise in the UK universities.
Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning
Archive for December 20th, 2008
Proposed Code of Conduct for Teachers angers Twitterers
December 20th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
An article by Jessica Shepherd in yesterdays Guardian newspaper has drawn the ire of twitter posters today. The article, entitled “Teachers could face sanction for weekend drunkenness”, reported on the new code of conduct being issued by the General Teaching Council for England. The code says teachers could face sanctions if they damage “public trust and confidence” in their profession.
According to the Guardian “Keith Bartley, chief executive of the General Teaching Council for England (GTC), the profession’s watchdog, said teachers needed to “consider their place in society”, and act as role models.
When asked what the watchdog would do if teachers were drunk and rowdy at the weekend, Bartley said the GTC would look at the individual circumstances before deciding if they should face disciplinary tribunals.
Teachers didn’t have to be exemplary citizens every second, Bartley said. Nevertheless, their behaviour could be “lawful but not acceptable”.
The code, which comes into force next autumn, states that teachers and trainees must “uphold the law and maintain standards of behaviour, both inside and outside school, that are appropriate given their membership of an important and responsible profession”.
They should “demonstrate awareness of their role as a significant figure in the lives of children and young people, lead by example, and model the characteristics they are trying to inspire in young people”.
In the discussion on Twitter, which is still ongoing at the time of writing, Drew Buddie said “surely a schools own staff code of conduct is sufficient? if teachers have to stand up to that scrutiny why not all professions?”
Josie Fraser was outright in her opposition to the code: “GTC proposals a timely xmas insult to teaching staff everywhere. Stuff already covered in Terms and Conditions of employment. What would be more useful to teachers is support in understanding management of public/private online. Which is what I’m working on.”
Kate Sim pointed out that ther are some good bits – “Keep up to date with important changes in [..] technology, so that they can help.” But Drew Buddy replied “but how the heck does THAT clause belong in a (Code of Conduct) document with all the other claptrap” and having read the whole proposal Kate Sim replied “too bits concern me who will decide what is appropriate behaviour? This is wide open to interpretation.”
Leon Cynch raised the question of privacy “I object to the GTCE role model code in that it is intrusive into teachers’ personal lives.”
In my view Kate and Leon have raised critcial questions. In proposing to take sanctions againsr teachers for what may be legal activities in their own time, the GTC is setting themselves up as moral judges over teachers’ lives. could sanctions be taken against someone for writing “inappropriate” comments to Twitter? Is a teacher who gets sent off for being involved in a fight in a rugby game to be disciplined?
The GTCE are failing teachers. The use of new technologies is blurring the divisions between the public and private. The GTCE should be supporting teachers in dealing with these issues.
The proposals are now subject to consultation and hopefully the teachers’ unions will lead the opposition. If you want to follow the discussions on twitters a tag has now been established: #GTCE.
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News Bites
From a Jisc press release:
Over 14,000 items of archived TV footage from 17 European countries are now available via the EUscreen online portal for teaching, research and general interest.
EUscreen – the result of a collaboration between 36 partners across Europe – provides a rich insight into Europe’s television heritage with content dating from the 1920s to the present day.
The portal includes rare footage and commentary on key events in history, including a 1962 interview with Martin Luther King about racial discrimination in the US.
John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway and principal investigator on the EUscreen project, said: “This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in social history or indeed TV history, as it brings together tens of thousands of clips from across Europe. The portal is available to anyone (not only academics) and it is very easy to get absorbed and spend hours browsing all of the footage.”
The expansive footage has also proved popular as a learning aid for foreign language students, with clips available in 14 languages.
By the end of September 2012, there will be around 30,000 items of digital content freely available on the portal as the European providers continue to add carefully selected material.
Open online seminar
Jisc are hosting an open, online seminar on ‘Making Assessment Count (MAC)’ on Friday 3rd Feb – 1-2pm. The presenters are Professor Peter Chatterton (Daedalus e-World Ltd) and Professor Gunter Saunders (University of Westminster).
The mailing for the seminar says” “The objective of Making Assessment Count is primarily to help students engage more closely with the assessment process, either at the stage where they are addressing an assignment or at the stage when they receive feedback on a completed assignment. In addition an underlying theme of MAC is to use technology to help connect student reflections on their assessment with their tutors. To facilitate the reflection aspect of MAC a web based tool called e-Reflect is often used. This tool enables the authoring of self-review questionnaires by tutors for students. On completion of an e-Reflect questionnaire a report is generated for the student containing responses that are linked to the options the student selected on the questionnaire.”
You can find out more ans sign up for the seminar at http://jiscmac.eventbrite.co.uk/
EC-TEL 2012
The EC-TEL 2012: Seventh European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills takes place on 18-21 September 2012 at Saarbrücken in Germany.
The focus for the conference includes:
- How can schools prepare young people for the technology-rich workplace of the future?
- How can we use technology to promote informal and independent learning outside traditional educational settings?
- How can we use next generation social and mobile technologies to promote informal and responsive learning?The deadline for proposals is April 2.
Visitors and Residents
David White (University of Oxford) and Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC) have been attracting quite a stir with their JISC-funded work on Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?, being undertaken as part of the Developing Digital Literacies programme webinar series.
Slides, audio and a recording of the Blackboard Collaborate session where they presented some of the findings of their work can be found at http://bit.ly/jiscdiglitvr.
ECER 2010
The keynotes, videos, radio shows and interviews from the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki:
Taccle handbook for teachers order form
Here you find the Taccle handbook for teachers order form.
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