Better for the young people of this country – and the world – than the Queen’s Jubilee is the news that a secondary school in the North of England has taken up Breakthrough to Learning and is preparing to use it throughout the school from September!

My last blog recommended a lecture on the revolution in education by Professor Eric Mazur. It is exactly the same message as the ethos of this school. I quote from a pamphlet handed out to new teachers at the school:

We are about learning. We are unusual in that. So much time and energy in schools is spent on pursuing teaching standards, exam grades, league table positions etc. that, in reality, little time is left for learning. Continue reading →

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Above is a site that anyone interested in education should view and rejoice in. It is a lecture by Eric Mazur, a Harvard Professor of Physics, entitled Confessions of a Converted Lecturer. He observes what many of us have noted – that, although printing has been around for four centuries, teaching is still based on the practice of a time when oral transmission from teacher to pupil was the only method of passing the knowledge and culture of a community from generation to generation. Continue reading →

I’ve been reading a very interesting article describing some experimental work in Australia by teachers improving the literacy of their pupils through the new technology of computers. *

No doubt, since 1998 many other teachers everywhere in the world have embraced the new technology, especially younger teachers who themselves grew up with computers. Because I recognise that the future must lie with these amazing new tools, I took advantage of the success of the book form of The Language of Ideas to rewrite it as an interactive computer course (www.languageofideas.co.uk)

My decision to make the Breakthrough to Learning courses available online has already borne fruit: this week a secondary school has contacted me for ways of implementing it throughout their school. Continue reading →