Thursday 9 May 2013

Learning Doesn't Need To Be Boring

The knees of the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, must be feeling pretty bruised today as they jerked so fast that he must have strained something.
Exactly what the minister was objecting to was a 'culture of low expectations in English schools who have been using Mr Men characters to teach 16-year-olds about Adolf Hitler.
'Too many teachers were treating young people on the verge of university study as though they have the attention span of infants' Gove said saying that students should be using worksheets, extracts and mind maps, books, sources and conversation in history.
As usual he hasn't done his own homework because the Mr Men project comes after the students have done all the books, worksheets, essay writing and sources as a consolidation exercise of the previous learning, not as a way of learning about history.
Obviously the Education secretary was far too busy to read the online resource for history teachers before shooting off his mouth, the activity is described as 'a great way of rounding off or revising the Rise of Hitler with IGCSE students.
They produce a 'Mr. Men' book about the topic and then read these to primary school / Year 7 students in a team challenge'.
Nothing like the dumbing down that Michael Give is trying to paint it as, just a fun exercise at the end of the learning which shows history doesn't need to be about pouring over books and memorising dates but can be shown in an interesting and entertaining way.
Michael Gove should watch Horrible Histories sometimes which is shows that History can be entertaining and educational and need not be boring and stiff as he wants.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i think we will see a revolution in education between now and 2020 with the likes of MOOC and gamification...

q

Lucy said...

Online courses are becoming more popular and there are some decent free ones. Not too sure what gamification means, will have to google it.