Month: January 2026

Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash. Showing the punts at Quayside in Cambridge. These boats were my training for public speaking. These particular boats are lighter than the slightly larger “Baby Behemoths” that we also used at Scudamore’s.

Class Summary

Today, we discussed the documentary Most Likely to Succeed (2015) in breakout rooms. We also talked about privacy and the FIPPA, using creative commons and how to incorporate images in our posts and credit them, and about our projects with our learning pods.

Blog Prompts:

1. Do we need to re-imagine education?

Education should be adapted to prepare students for life in today’s world. Today’s world is constantly changing and change of how and what we teach students is necessary for their success. Wholesale, revolutionary change of how education is practised, however, is dangerous because of the risk of introducing untested and ineffective ways of teaching. The first students to be subjected to a new method may be let down by it. It is better to make incremental changes, discarding what is no longer effective and modifying useful practice to improve it. Additionally, as discussed in our break-out room, innovation is good, but not at the expense of core skills.

2. What obstacles to educators face when they try to change pedagogy?

Changing pedagogy is likely to meet resistance from parents and from teachers who are accustomed to the old way of teaching. Parents, who expect a letter grade rather than the proficiency scale, are frustrated when they are told that the letter grade is not the same thing. When their child comes home with a “proficient” grade, they understand it as a B and are frustrated when they see that their child has achieved a high score on their tests and assignments.

For teachers, discarding old ways of teaching that have worked well for them in the past, reworking whole units in order to make them conform to a new way and introducing methods that have not been proven or whose results are different from previous methods is a lot of work; a lot of work for something which may be discarded in turn when its efficacy is disproved. Incremental change is thus better than revolutionary change so that each modification can be seen as an improvement and not an upending of the system.

It is also likely that if a big change is seen to be political, it will meet resistance from those who are ideologically opposed to it. They will not see it as a way to more effectively teach and learn, but as a government-imposed brainwashing project. Incremental change is better.

3. Why is Privacy important in our classrooms?

Privacy is important in our classrooms because we are teaching minors. Any pictures published could be used by adult predators or by the students’ peers for bullying. Likewise, students’ work could be used to gather information on the students by outside actors to harm them. The students may also be inhibited if they know that everything they do is going to be released to the public. If embarrassing material (immature behaviour and opinions, and uncurated presentation, &c.) is released, it could follow them beyond the classroom and into later life. A dodgy statement made in jest could later ruin their career.