Posted in Alternative, Parents on Mar 31st, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I speak to Lorna Tormey and Pauline O'Reilly from the Home Education Network. Both Lorna and Pauline have decided to educate their children at home and the share the experience for the benefit of listeners who might be interested in doing the same, in the immediate term or in the future. Among the various topics we discuss are:
- Why they began home educating their children
- A typical day of home educating
- Unschooling
- Autonomous Education
- John Holt
- Not following a specific curriculum
- A weekly routine that constantly changes
- Giving up a career to home educate
- Choices about secondary schooling and going to university
- Learning algebra
- How different families approach home education
- Helpful sources of information for home education
- Steiner Education (bringing together hands, heart and head)
- Dealing with challenge
- Dealing with boredom
- How active parents are as home educators as children grow older
- Difficult days and creating space for parents’ own projects
- Support of the Home Education Network
- Opportunities for children to socialise with other children
- Play-based learning
- World schooling
- Advice for parents who are currently involved in involuntary home education
- Deschooling
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Posted in Technology on Mar 23rd, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's podcast I speak to my colleague in Marino Institute of Education, Ciara Reilly, about ideas for teaching online and offline while schools are closed. The initial impetus for our discussion was a padlet wall that Ciara developed to support teachers and which is available here. But our conversation covered many additional topics including the following:
- Where to start in online teaching and learning at primary school in particular.
- Digital Learning Framework.
- The value of having children work as a group rather than individually
- Use a timetable with children
- Singapore experience
- Acceptable Use Policies
- What teachers expect from students
- Planning for the future and online learning
- Risk of children spending too much time on screen
- The value of children being bored
- Use of iPads and use of textbooks
- Exam preparation for post-primary students
- Things you can do offline
- Hashtag for teachers to use on Twitter: #edshareie
And Ciara discusses many resources available to teachers and their students including the following:
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Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I'm delighted to speak to Professor Kathy Hall from University College Cork. In a wide-ranging discussion about teaching, teacher education, research and policy, the topics raised include the following:
- Becoming a primary teacher in Carysfort College
- Doing a Bachelor in Arts degree in University College Dublin, with many other primary teachers, followed by a H.Dip
- Returning to Carysfort to do a postgraduate diploma course in special educational needs
- Starting a Masters degree in Trinity College, transferring to complete and PhD and becoming a teacher educator in Christchurch Canterbury College
- Moving to Leeds Metropolitan University and subsequently to the Open University and two years later to University College Cork
- Her doctoral dissertation on the topic of discovery learning and first language learning
- Her book, Listening to Stephen Read and its implications for teaching reading
- Why some children leave school with limited literacy
- The relationship between policy and teaching literacy
- How the market influences education in Ireland
- Assessing student teachers’ preparedness to teach literacy
- Summative and formative Assessment – Black and William Important Review on Formative Assessment
- Can anyone teach?
- The relationship between skills, practice and reflection in teaching
- School and University roles in teacher education
- The unifying theme across all her research
- Discourse analysis as a research method and what you can learn about classrooms from using this method. In this framework she refers to the IRF – initiation, response and feedback – pattern of classroom interaction.
- Doctoral research topics
- How different opportunities to learn can exist within the same classroom
- Problems with competitive classrooms
- Advice she would give the Minister for Education
- Etienne Wenger Communities of Practice book
- Tara Westover Educated
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Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
This week's podcast is a collaborative one with Darren Ralston from The Ed Narrative podcast. Darren was in Ireland to present a workshop at the annual conference of the Computers in Education Society of Ireland (CESI), which was held in Athlone on Saturday last. Among the topics we discuss on the podcast are the following:
- Integrating technology into one’s teaching
- The difference between an instructional coach and a learning technology integrator
- Using virtual reality in the classroom, using Google Expeditions
- How instructional coaches are organised in US schools
- Becoming, and working as, an instructional coach
- Managing his workload as a coach
- Comparing mentoring and coaching as interpreted in his setting
- How he got into teaching
- How he teaches literature
- How he chooses literature to teach
- Teaching drama – using comedic improvisation
- Brave New World
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Starting The Ed Narrative Podcast
- Equipment used for podcasting
- Selecting guests for podcats
- Neil Postman
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