What Makes Great Ed-Tech?

Books will soon be obsolete in the public schools. Scholars will be instructed through the eye. It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed inside of ten years. Thomas Edison, 1913 I first saw the above quote in Daisy Christodoulou’s fabulous book …

Knowledge Organisers – A Failed Revolution

A young apprentice, tired of having to carry pails of water, enchants a broom to complete the task for him. An ingenious solution, until the apprentice realises his new tool is out of control. Soon enough, the broom has multiplied exponentially. Now, the brooms carry so much water that the room begins to flood. Disaster …

DI Video Presentation

On the 9th January I had the pleasure of presenting on DI at BrewEd Cleethropes. I'm really thankful to Jake, Louise and Dave for inviting me. They did an amazing job putting together such a great event give these times. You can enjoy the presentation here. Twitter: @s_hall_teach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkjODOreKxI&t=1695s

The Hidden Component of Successful Online Learning

You know how it can be with online learning.  You plan a great lesson, give some killer explanations and have some neat tasks planned.  But, there’s that nagging feeling. The students aren’t learning as best as they could in the classroom.  What’s going on here?  The Hidden Component Arguably there are some parts of teaching …

Maps and Variation Theory

The Problem  Present a student with this map - and they can tell you each of the continents and oceans. But, present them with this image… and, the student can’t tell you what continent they’re looking at.  The bane of every geography teacher’s life.  The easy starter activity that suddenly derails the lesson.  So what’s …

Constructivism Makes Kids Unhappy

3 tweets have caught my eye this week. The first of these was from a teacher who asked his students what they wanted from school, with the results shown above. The second, from Edutopia, sharing the supposed virtues of thinking hat. And, the final one, from a Teacher Tapp survey which showed that over 50% …

DI: Knowledge – Part 3

In my most recent posts, I’ve been looking at knowledge. I’ve tried to explain how Engelmann has split it into three different categories. So far, I’ve looked at basic forms and joining forms.  These are useful, but they seem somewhat limited. Most lessons we teach require far more complex levels of thinking. For instance, solving …

DI: Knowledge – Part 2

In my last post, I introduced how Engelmann categorises knowledge. I tried to show how there are three main forms and gave examples of basic forms of knowledge.  These forms of knowledge are useful when we’re trying to teach students to label an object or phenomenon they haven’t previously observed.Each time, we are asking a …

DI: Knowledge – Part 1

This is the second post in a series on Direct Instruction. My last post gave a brief introduction to DI. This post will be the first of three on types of knowledge. The type of knowledge that we seek to teach has important implications for how we teach it.  For instance, I wouldn’t use the …

DI: An Introduction

In 2002, a team of underhand pitchers, fat batters and washed up stars came within a few games of winning baseball's biggest prize. Playing out of Oakland, California, the A’s were one of the poorest teams in the division. Nobody had heard of half their players. And so-called experts had written them off before a …