Improving Remote Education - A Thread.

Over the last couple of weeks, the discussion has been about what primary schools are offering to their communities and how we can improve on it.

I'm relistening to the sessions, so points may not be in order as I add them... 1/

1. Non-teaching SLT are not experts on remote learning, what can they base any judgement on?

2. Facilitating staff discussion and sharing is likely to be far more effective to develop practice within your school. /2
3. Increasing access to devices/internet is a step towards making offers more equitable, but it is only part of the process.

4. Entertainment and engagement are different things.
5. Pre-recording should not be perfection, perfection wastes time and energy.

6. It is scary being beamed into someone's home, but having your home on show is also stressful. (perhaps something for Ofsted to consider, we are guests in other people's homes)
7. Giving over staff meetings to staff discussion and sharing is probably a better use of the time than other stuff you have planned.
8. Feedback doesn't have to be written. Mote is a chrome extension that allows voice recordings to be added. Children hear their teacher's voice, which is massive for wellbeing.
9. Loom is a useful tool for more visual feedback where appropriate.

10. Give staff the option to invite SLT to sessions, not to observe but to participate.
11. Learning clinics for parents help them to understand what is going on. Education can be mystifying if you haven't been in it for a while.

12. How to video guides to support parents are useful too.
13. Make sure that parents have access to resources such as pens, paper etc. Consider giving out the exercise books you haven't used this year.

14. Encourage parents to feedback to you through appropriate channels. (You will have to manage expectations, but you need their view).
15. Carefully designed google forms are good for this.

16. Try and find out how many actually have access to proper devices and not just phones.
17. Sharing staff discoveries - what tech, tips and ideas have they used that work?

18. Don't reinvent the wheel - if Oak do your lesson with full resources - don't record a new one just introduce it.
19. Use expertise. If there is someone who can bang out 10 music videos in the time it takes you to do 1 - get them to do yours, offer them something you are good at in return.
20. Share your lessons with others. (this is don't reinvent the wheel again, but this is so important).

21. Have an overview of what you are teaching, and record who is accessing it and completing work. This will help in the future. It doesn't have to be complicated.
22. Keep it simple. Effective teaching is better than entertaining teaching.
23. My cat is a pain in the arse, everyone's cat is, if they crash the session, go with it. I'm typing this because he wants feeding and is interrupting the flow... I'll be back

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Read my notes on LoRs:
It appears to be a combination of some of these factors, along with others not mentioned here. Ibn Khaldun’s analysis appears to be a good foundation to go off. [Thread]


Ibn Khaldun makes an important distinction between what he calls العُمران الحضري and العمران البدوي, which, for convenience’s sake, I’ll translate as urban civilisation and rural/Bedouin lifestyle.

He notes that the rural world is largely nomadic, and, as such, Bedouins build character traits that assist the survivalist lifestyle — e.g. the fact that they have to kill snakes that might pop up at any time during their travels helps them build courage and bravery.

The lack of stability and a proper settlement means they don’t really have the luxury of sitting down to let their minds wonder around. They thus build a preservation mindset, which manifests itself through emphasis on memorisation and transmission.

Inhabitants of urban world, on the other hand, are largely settled and established. This means they face less attacks from snakes, lions or danger of human attack from other tribes. Thus, they don’t build the courage and bravery of the Bedouins.

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I like this heuristic, and have a few which are similar in intent to it:


Hiring efficiency:

How long does it take, measured from initial expression of interest through offer of employment signed, for a typical candidate cold inbounding to the company?

What is the *theoretical minimum* for *any* candidate?

How long does it take, as a developer newly hired at the company:

* To get a fully credentialed machine issued to you
* To get a fully functional development environment on that machine which could push code to production immediately
* To solo ship one material quanta of work

How long does it take, from first idea floated to "It's on the Internet", to create a piece of marketing collateral.

(For bonus points: break down by ambitiousness / form factor.)

How many people have to say yes to do something which is clearly worth doing which costs $5,000 / $15,000 / $250,000 and has never been done before.