Tag Archives: School

Reforming education

The reason I do the job I do, is because I believe that education can change lives. I believe that is a universally applicable truth. For some though, the importance and potential impact is more significant. I am privileged to work with a host of organisations helping them develop and deliver their learning provision. One […]

The Gamification of Education

We often think that gamification is a new idea but we forget, we’ve been turning exams and tests into games for a long long time. Here’s a really good infographic on the subject from Knewton and Column Five Media    

What Games are Good For?

In spite of my criticisms of many educational games, I believe passionately in the potential of games to inspire learning. I don’t think that games are a panacea but they do have many characteristics that can make a profoundly positive impact on our lives.  The real educational value for gaming lies in four key areas: […]

Play & Games articles

There’s a lot of really interesting work going on with play and games – here are some of the articles that have caught my eye in the last couple weeks. Play Bring Back Play and Disorganized Sports to Our Children. From The Innovative Educator. http://j.mp/n8tCG3 ChicagoQuest promotes game-playing at school – Chicago Sun-Times http://j.mp/qU8zEk Parents’ […]

Art and Play

One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is a website that will help primary school children (5-11s) with their art work. The audience for the resource is quite complicated because teachers are likely to be the standard bearers for it – they’ll be the ones that direct children to it (at least […]

What is school for?

I was party to a fascinating discussion with colleagues from the RSA yesterday about the nature of education: asking the basic question – what’s the point of school? Catalysed by the change in UK government, there seems to be a battle between the idea of school being a place for ‘transferring a body of knowledge’ […]

Knowledge is power to do more…

A few months ago I wrote of the growing belief among young people that Google removes the need to know anything.  However, it seems that the pursuit of knowledge seems to be on the rise in two very different quarters. Micheal Gove, the UK Education Secretary, in his recently announced review of the National Curriculum, […]