Month: September 2016

SMART Working

There are some parallels between SMART working principles and SMART teaching. In bothe the interaction between people, the physical space they are in and technology are critical. In addition with SMART working flexibility is the norm and people work at the times and from the places that make sense for them and the task or tasks that they have to complete.

Take a look at this short overview video on SMART working and see if you can see the similarities with modern learning and teaching approaches.

Innovative Classrooms

There is a lot of talk about innovative classrooms. What is an innovative classroom? Many would think it was inevitably a classroom filled full of complex IT with screens everywhere. Well actually we think an innovative classroom is one that presents no barriers to a teacher and helps them to do their job the way they want to do it.

This of course makes the assumption that the majority of academic staff have a plan for how to get their students to learn through a mixture of presenting them wth information and giving them space and time to practice authentic tasks, sometimes individually and sometimes in groups, using that information and potentially other information that they gather themselves.

All too often academic staff do seem to us to have such a plan.

Unfortunately all too often the state of the classroom they have to teach in, and especially the furniture and the IT, put up barriers to make it hard for them.