Down to London yesterday to speak to this year's cohort of PGCE colleagues completing their training at UCL Institute of Education. I was a Fawcett Fellow there during last academic year - see the blog for lots of posts about that experience.
I've been going to UCL quite regularly for around 20 year since the era when we had our GA Secondary Phase Committee and Education Group meetings there, to meetings with David Lambert when he worked there, and previous sessions for the PGCE cohorts over the years, as well as GA project meetings. We used to have our lunch in the nearby cafe in Russell Square.
Was interested to see that several years on, building work is still taking place in the buildings.
My session was on the use of technology to assist curriculum making, which I explained is what teachers do in the classroom... and what I researched for my Fawcett Fellowship.
It's an updated version of a talk I've done quite a few times before over the years.
There were a few new emphases which I quite liked relating to teaching with (or without) technology. One of them was to cultivate your idiosyncracies based on a quote from Dylan Wiliam on the value of listening to research. I'm not a major fan of the cherry-picked research on cognitive science that some schools use to dictate how teachers teach. I talked a bit about my encounters with previous fads in education too.
I wish these new arrivals into the profession good luck, and hope they have a long and fulfilling career.
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