1.2 Copyright and OER I assume that you are reading this unit because you would like to create a unit similar
to the materials that you can find on the OpenLearn website. You therefore have a teaching
purpose and are particularly interested in the use of online tuition. Hopefully you are
also keen to share your teaching materials with others in OpenLearn Works. But why bother
creating a new Open Educational Resource? Surely there is so much material already
available for free on the web anyway! I would answe
Learning outcomes After studying this unit you will: be able to state your own motivation for producing self-study Open Educational Resources (OERs); have investigated and analysed some of the research into online learning; have evaluated some examples of educational resources for active open learning; be able to plan a structured learning experience using a range of resources; be able to construct an OpenLearn-style unit by remixing res
1 What is monitoring? Monitoring means gathering evidence to show what progress has been made towards strategic priorities and targets and the implementation of policies. Evaluation means making judgements about the results. DfES 2003, National Training Programme for New Governors, Module 2, p. 4. Monitoring is a key aspect of governors' remit; it is necessary so that governing bodies can carry out their strat
Introduction Why are schools in the UK run by school governors? This unit will examine how the role has developed and the main tasks and responsibilities that exist today. We will also look at the need for self-evaluation and how the setting of a clear strategic direction can help governors achieve the required targets.
5 Conclusion I hope this unit has made clearer what a business manager can do to impact positively on the school and its core function of teaching and learning as we move forward into a changing future. You may now find it helpful to revisit your job description and the notes you made in Activity 1. Equally, through some of the new developments that are taking place in society, the school itself will need business management in order to best position itself to help pupils, parents and communit
3.2 Case Study 1: Caswell's cockroaches The setting is a class of nine- and ten-year-olds in Toronto, Canada. The curriculum focus is biology. The classroom has been carefully organised to mirror the way in which a real adult scientific research community operates at the University of Toronto's zoological department, local to the school. Over a ten-week period, the young students are given the opportunity to become immersed in a culture of ‘scientific inquiry’ by their teacher, Beverley Caswell, who has chosen to make the Madag
1.2 Influences on creativity In the late 1630s, the poet John Milton travelled from England to Italy. While there he visited the astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and observed the skies above Florence through the telescope through which Galileo was studying the moon and Saturn. When viewed through
References 5 Summary and conclusion In this unit we have considered questions surrounding the future of school geography. This may at first seem an odd question, but it is salutary to remember that the advocates of geography had to work very hard to make the case for the subject's place in the English National Curriculum. As the unit sought to show, even if we can agree that geography has an important role to play in schools, opinions vary as to the purpose of the subject: Is it a 1 Visions of geography: an introduction In considering the image which best reflects your ‘vision’ of geography, perhaps it is the volcano, which is a testament to the ‘awe and wonder’ of the natural world? Or is your vision to help young people make sense of the gross inequalities that exist in the world? Geography teaching is also about providing young people with the skills that help them fit into the demands of an increasingly globalised economy. There is the argument that geography teaching is at its best when it 1.2 The warm up The importance of an effective warm up to prepare the body for physical exertion cannot be emphasised enough. Warm-up activities for dance should: mobilise the joints; increase the internal temperature of the body; increase the heart rate and blood flow to the muscles; make the muscles warm and pliable; increase the range of movement around the joints; increase 2.4 Achieving targets Setting tasks at the end of the mentor session each week may appear, on the surface, a fairly simple task compared to the previous in-depth discussion and evaluation of teaching that will have taken place. Targets may be viewed as providing a sense of momentum and achievement during the school experience placement as those set one week can be ticked off the next. However, is it really as simple as that? What should a mentor do if the student teacher is not achieving the targets set? In the fi 2.2 Working together to support and challenge Planning and evaluation are essential aspects of teaching, but very difficult to observe. Through working together and collaboratively planning teaching and evaluating lessons, the student teacher can learn how experienced teachers carry these out. This phase is an important transition between the student teacher supporting the mentor in the classroom, and taking full responsibility for the class. Involving student teachers in the minutiae of lesson planning is an important part of helping th Introduction The OU PGCE has been developed by The Open University and its partner schools to provide an innovative, student-teacher centred approach to initial teacher education. We aim to build on the skills, knowledge and experience that student teachers bring to the profession, and then to prepare them for a career in teaching. The course leads to the award of PGCE, and Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) conferred by the appropriate statutory body. Working with a Partner Schools Network, the OU PGCE provi 1.6.3 Mailing lists and newsgroups Mailing or discussion lists are email-based discussion groups. When you send an email to a mailing list address, it is sent automatically to all the other members of the list. The majority of academic-related mailing lists in the UK are maintained by JISCMail. You will find details of joining these mailing lists on the JISCMail website. Mailing lists 1.6.2 Alerts Online bookshops and some of the major search engines offer ‘Alerts’ services. These work by allowing you to set up a profile once you have registered on their site, and when there are items meeting your criteria you receive an email. The good thing about alerts is that you don’t have to do anything once you have set up your profile. The downside, particularly with alerts services from the search engines, is that given the extent to which internet traffic is on the increase whether new 1.5.8 Bibliographic software If you are considering taking your studies further you might like to consider using bibliographic software. Bibliographic software can be used to sort references, annotate them, manage quotations or create reading lists. There are several software packages on the market. Some are listed below. 1.5.7 Referencing We mentioned above that we need to reference sources to ensure we abide by copyright legislation. But there is another reason we need to give accurate references to items we use – so we can share it. Consider this scenario. A friend says they’ve just read an interesting article where Joshua Schachter, founder of Delicious has spoken about why it isn’t a faceted search system, and you should read it. How would you go about finding it? Would you start looking in a news database, a s 1.5.4 The 5 Ds If you don’t use a system at all, then you could suffer from the effects of information overload: losing important information wasting time on trying to find things ending up with piles of physical and virtual stuff everywhere One technique you might like to apply to your files (be they paper or electronic) is the 5Ds. Try applying these and see if you can reduce your information overload.
1.5.3 Desktop search tools Finding your paperwork or electronic files can be a problem. You may find that even if you do have some sort of filing system, your structure soon gets quite large with files in multiple locations, which can be hard to navigate. You may find yourself making arbitrary decisions about which folder to place a document in. It may make sense now but in the future, when you look where you think it should be, it’s not there. At times like this you may resort to the search command from the Wi
