Behind the Scenes of Working with Big Brands

Designing curriculum in different environments — whether in schools, EdTech startups, or established institutions — looks very different behind the scenes. In the classroom, feedback is instant. In EdTech, learners are invisible. And in big brands like the BBC, process rules everything. What does it mean to design learning experiences for learners you’ll never meet?

A Tale of Two Scenarios

In the classroom, you get checked once a term by your line manager, a person that has done your job in the not too distant past. You have a degree of autonomy but the understanding is that your manager knows more than you and you should adjust your delivery from their feedback.

Stepping into EdTech design, where your line manager is an engineer, a product manager, a financial expert, or a researcher, it just isn’t the same. Scrums, mini-staff meetings, can be daily. Sprints – short-term plans, can be weekly or bi-weekly. Reviews are often ad-hoc, once a product is released, so learning can occur to improve efficiency within the team or engagement by the customer.

The biggest shift wasn’t just who my manager was — it was what counted as ‘good teaching.’ In the classroom, feedback came from an educator; in EdTech, feedback came from metrics and business goals.

Shifting Curriculum Design Approaches

It’s interesting, thinking about the freedom I experienced being out of the classroom, being almost autonomous with my design ideas. Justifying the order of the learning, using my experience and the skills I had cultivated, without necessarily relying on a manual of any kind (other than curriculum documents). The feedback wasn’t from a manager who knew more from an educational viewpoint, they knew more about business impact.

But it’s also interesting holding this idea of freedom within a bubble of accountability. Scrutiny was everywhere because decisions cost money, and change was very expensive.

Agile Curriculum Design in EdTech

This freedom-within-accountability played out in the agile environment at Sumdog.

Products ran on timelines — sprints, spikes, and cross-team collaboration. Sprints required close observation to ensure no part lagged. Our project manager, the very skilled Tim Leslie, kept everything moving. This was the job of the project manager, our team had the very skilled Tim Leslie.

As a team of one, I was often the bottleneck. Developers could write question and answer code faster than I could create and sequence the 3000+ skills across 19 regional curricula. The daily check-ins were important to ensure that no one team was without tasks and that no one individuals was treading water due to the load.

For Sumdog, problems with the workflow presented as delayed or curtailed releases. This in turn could lead to lost revenue from promised features expected by customers. In the classroom, difficulties were far less impactful. MIsunderstanding might extend the length of a topic or require reframing of a challenging concept. A classroom is for learning, for both the adults and the children or young people.

Curriculum Design in Startups vs Established Providers

Sumdog thrived because of the agile methodology and collaborative approach to working within and across teams. Contrast this with the BBC, where I worked as a content creator for their GCSE maths resources, which afforded a very different model of educational content creation.

The BBC is an established name in Britain so the structures for curriculum design and content delivery were firm because they worked. There was no need for daily checks, emails sufficed to keep colleagues and managers in the loop. The content was only one very small part of their income stream, compared with Sumdog, where the content became the backbone of what the sales team sold.

Comparing Environments

There were benefits: creative freedom, less day-to-day pressure, and the ability to focus deeply on one strand of content. But there were also challenges: duplication of effort, gaps where no one had bridged two related topics, and a lack of the iterative testing that agile thrives on.

In the classroom, misalignment shows up quickly in confused learners. In this environment, misalignment showed up much later — in the difficulty of turning individually strong resources into a seamless progression.

Weighing the Approaches

Reflecting on these three very different environments, its interesting considering that each presented benefits and challenges.

The traditional school system afforded you with instant feedback: smiles or confused faces. You knew your impact but your product was always guided by the established system. Conultation evenings and individual test scores were your opportunity to see the success you encouraged. But, you only worked with the learners in front of you, sometimes fewer than 20 for the entire year.

The agile nature of Sumdog meant freedom to create, within a structure of accountability and collaboration. You didn’t get to see the learners impacted by the product, the business numbers were the evidence of success. The data was constant, informative and relentless; it demanded attention if the product was to succeed.

The BBC offered freedom too, but the boundaries were firmer: creativity was welcome so long as it was the right kind of creativity. Working solo agreed with me: the faster I worked, the more work I received, the higher the pay. But, I missed bouncing ideas of someone, or having an opportunity to challenge an established process.

In short:

  • School: instant human feedback, but limited reach.
  • Sumdog: data-driven, iterative, wide impact but learners invisible.
  • BBC: stability and clarity, but silos and delayed alignment.

Key Takeaways

Regardless of the environment, certain elements are required for a smooth rollout.

  1. Clear roles within the organisation. You need to know your task and your purpose.
  2. A coherent plan. Release dates, product expectations, and an understanding of the elements of the whole keep a team progressing.
  3. Purpose is key. Reiteration of why you are doing what you are doing is necessary motivation. In my case, the learners were always at the core of the work I did, and continue to do.

Working across schools, startups, and established institutions has shown me that designing curriculum in different environments requires balancing freedom, structure, and purpose.

Every environment shapes curriculum design differently. What lessons have you learned from working with colleagues, or creating content solo as a freelance developer?

Balancing Understanding and Practice: From the Classroom to Effective Product Design

New teachers rely on resources. Experienced teachers make their own. But, is this always the case? Sadly, no. Too often, lessons become about covering pages rather than uncovering understanding.

The good news is, you can stand out. By focusing on quality over quantity, you can make your teaching reflect your skills and insight — not just parrot the department handout.

Quality Beats Quantity — Every Time in Learning

I have less than fond memories of the feedback I received in my early years of teaching. Feedback pertaining to how much the learners in my care wrote, how full the jotters were, how often they underlined date and title. The message being that what learners produce needs to look good and look full, and meeting this criteria means learning has occurred in the classroom: quantity over quality.

Call me a rebel, but I never prescribed to this, I still don’t. Don’t get me wrong, practice is necessary for mastery, but understanding comes first. Meeting learning objectives isn’t about how many questions are completed — but too often, that’s how it’s measured.

Following the earlier approach will lose the learners needing more from you and disengage those who need more challenge.

Support should be about explanation — maybe you went too fast the first time. It could mean offering 1-to-1 help, especially if the learner is too self-conscious to ask a question in front of the whole class. Or it could involve partner work, which allows learners to hear another interpretation.

Extension should be about application — using what has been learned in a real-life example. It might mean creating something new, such as explaining a pattern spotted or a rule method for other learners. Or it could be a new challenge — something hinted at but not fully explained in the lesson.

In a nutshell, the message we should share is quality over quantity.

Measure Understanding, not Volume

The end goal is understanding, not filled jotters. Quality work shows learning; volume does not.

Faster learners shouldn’t be punished with more of the same. Challenge them instead to apply and extend their thinking. Likewise, learners needing support shouldn’t experience extra practice as a punishment. Look inward: what can you reframe or recraft to help those who didn’t connect with your first explanation?

Balance Understanding with Practice

Saying this, learners need to appreciate the impact of practice. Memory is bolstered by repetition. Making a process automatic requires doing that process repeatedly; this is a fine balance that teachers need to practice getting right. Is the learning understood? Is it understood enough to be able to apply it elsewhere? Is it understood enough that there is no thinking needed about the process?

If ever learners doubt the impact of meaningful practice, draw their attention to a skill like driving a car, tying a shoelace, or dribbling a football. These skills are worlds apart, but are all reliant on practising the smaller steps that make up the larger skill. It is through meaningful practice that follows understanding that mastery emerges, not mind-numbing repetition to fill a jotter.

Maximising this Relationship

If you, as a teacher, see understanding in what learners share with you, your job is effectively done and you now pass them the torch so they take control of their next steps. Highlight the good that should be repeated or extended. Highlight the bad and illustrate why it is, so that such practice can be avoided. Create instances for making meaning of a process rather than providing practice for practice sake. This process will create bridges to new learning while also cementing the understanding they have achieved. This will spur them to make such processes automatic.

Use Resources, Don’t Let Them Use You!

If you are a teacher, there is a curriculum document to follow for your subject or year group. Create your learning intentions and success criteria for the day/week/term from that. Use the prescribed practice materials to support your delivery of the learning intentions and use the results from the practice to access the success criteria for the lesson.

The trap you must avoid is to use the practice materials to craft the learning intentions and success criteria. Use your craft, your training and years of study to break down the broad outcomes into manageable, achievable objectives, with clear success criteria, that learners can realise through engagement with the practice materials you provide.

The end is the success criteria, realised through the learning intention you wrote, first. The resource you share is one of a multitude of avenues learners can travel toward the success you are supporting them to achieve. Focus on the end and the learning intentions that will lead you there, not the practice that follows the sharing of key concepts.

The same principles apply beyond the classroom — whether you’re designing a lesson plan or an education product, the end goal must drive the method.

A Product’s Purpose, not the Additional Features

You have built an education platform. The platform is engaging and attractive, in terms of visual features and fun. Young and older children enjoy the games they can play and the maths they experience doesn’t detract from the fun experience.

The teacher feels at ease watching the class engage in maths practice and celebrates success with them as they compete with computers, their friends, the rest of the school, and the rest of the world. There is just one problem, what did they practice? What objective did they address, or success criteria did they meet? Without this end in mind, the practice, though constructive, lacks direction and purpose. Even more importantly, perhaps, the teacher has no idea if individual learners have progressed in any way.

The platform is truly engaging, but a revamp is crucial to achieve the company’s goal of engaging all learners. If this does not happen, the platform will become a one-hit wonder, or it will become a ‘golden time’ treat, where teachers set it up for kids to play. Unfortunately, in this state, the product is not a resource teachers would choose to support meeting the success criteria.

Enter the Education Injection

With the addition of steps, building up into skills, combining to address regional curriculum outcomes, the product shifts into a supportive tool rather than just a time filler. The skills, grouped by year group, are achieveable for learners who have been exposed to effective teaching that aims to address the regional outcomes.

The incentives, from the product, encourage the practice that is needed to acbieve the success criteria and is designed with teachers and learners in mind.

  1. Practice at the step level occurs.
  2. Steps within the skill are achieved, resulting in instant rewards.
  3. Skills progress, according to the designed progression pathway for the year, or according to what the teacher sets within the current study.
  4. New challenges are presented, following on from understood skills.

This process keeps learners progressing. This process of ‘practice the learning’, and ‘challenge with related new content’, is an ideal system for a classroom that emphasises the individual and their abilities and needs.

Tieing it Together

Some writers imagine the story’s conclusion first and then guide their characters toward that climax and resolution. Traders often buy stock with a clear selling price in mind. Athletes visualize the medal they aim to win before they even start the race.

Approach your role with the same mindset: know your goal, design a path with deliberate steps, and practice for mastery. Whether you’re developing progression pathways, planning lessons, or mapping out product design to engage customers, clarity of purpose is essential for success.

Start today—define your goal, map your steps, and take the first deliberate action toward achieving it.

Why Progression Pathways Fail (and How to Fix Them)

Have you ever found yourself teaching a curriculum but felt uncertain about charting progress? Or studied something without knowing whether you had met the stated objectives? Imagine you’re halfway through the term. You’ve delivered every lesson on the plan. And yet… you can’t say for sure if learners are truly on track. The curriculum says one thing, the classroom reality says another. This is where progression pathways succeed—or fail.

This sounds like an issue with the progression pathway. Read on for why these pathways can fail and what you can do to support enhancing them.

Complications for Effective Plans

Disconnect can be a major roadblock for meaningful pathways. Consider the curriculum expert, someone with years of experience under their belt and several letters after their name. This person knows how to craft the structure of a plan and knows what is needed to get from A to Z. Unfortunately, some common planning problems can emerge:

  1. Delivery – The teacher does not have the same point of view or skills as the developer.
  2. The effectiveness on the ground – The planner cannot account for all eventualities and the facilitator may take the plan as verbatim.
  3. Longevity – There is potential that the progression is no longer relevant or aligned to the thinking of the learning participants.
  4. Scope – The depth and breadth of the plan may be too great for the facilitator to skillfully implement the levels of learning inherent in the documentation.

Why the Planner isn’t Always to Blame

Sometimes the depth and breadth of a planner’s vision can make it difficult for facilitators to fully interpret or implement all intended outcomes. The teacher knows their craft, knows the learners and what they need, knows the curriculum, but is not able to follow the sometimes too complex progression.

Fixing the Disconnect: Simple First Steps

  1. Manageable outcomes, with smaller objectives contained within. This organisation supports formative assessment and clear and meaningful reporting.
  2. Planning flexibility. This is crucial because of the variety of learning environments as well as different levels of ability in one classroom.
  3. Opportunities for celebration. Including celebrations can recharge stamina for both learners and teachers during longer coursework.
  4. Adaptability. Enable adjustments during delivery, like repeating or extending some learning, cutting other areas short, or making new additions and removing obsolete content.

Improving Delivery

Step one with a progression pathway plan is to think about the person who is delivering the material. Are the outcomes, objectives, and success criteria understandable at face value or is time needed to interpret meanings behind the text? Any obstacles to interpreting the intent of the progression leads to different outcomes for different learning environments and different levels of success for different groups.

A Tale of Two Pathways

I remember working with two very different teams developing progression pathways, one for the technologies and one for mathematics.

I worked on the technology plan earlier in my career. It was very high-level and broad in its definition. The plan had three main categories for each outcome and at least three statements, one of each of the categories. This guided teachers in their delivery and allowed teachers freedom to choose content. Sometimes, the freedom was overwhelming. Additionally, the prescribed content was often not specific enough.

Compare this to a later progression I created for mathematics, where each year had on average thirty skill groups and each skill group had on average ten steps. The prescriptive and specific nature of this plan gave teachers the overall goals as well as the blocks that built up success. There was very little opportunity for confusion as the core learning had been distilled into bite size chunks, each of which could be targeted as the teacher saw the need. This prescriptive approach did not stifle teachers’ expression because of the built in flexibility of delivery.

Prescriptive Doesn’t Mean Rigid

Clarity is essential for an effective pathway. Allow for individuality in how lessons look but ensure that the core message that is delivered is the same for each environment. If you have different groups all aiming at the same qualification but the delivery has been interpreted differently from place to place, there is something lacking in the progression document.

Improving Effectiveness

Start with the goal in mind. Start with the objective or the overall outcome. When progression pathways are designed well, they serve multiple audiences — learners, educators, and even the organisations delivering them.

Following a progression of skills and then fitting this to learning statements, from a regional document, is a recipe for disaster. Imagine being given a textbook to use as your resource for a class you are to teach and then being told, “Now you have to ensure all these learning intentions are met.” This approach will result in a patchwork method of planning that loses effectiveness as you progress through the year because you did not know what the goal was before you started: you only have the start.

Once you know, and are clear on, what the goal of the learning is, most resources at your disposal can be used to effectively meet the needs of the participants. You know your goal, break down the larger idea into manageable chunks, use your resource for practice once learners have the tool to effectively engage with the content.

What Success Looks Like in Practice

When I built a progression pathway for an EdTech company delivering robotics education, it was essential that the objectives were aligned with regional standards from around the world. This affected several elements:

  1. Engagement with learners
    Children and young people were aware of what they were learning and practising and could see the results in front of them as they wrote code and built command sequences – reinforcing motivation and mastery. The objectives made sense for where they were.
  2. Support for teachers
    Many educators in elementary (primary) education have not received instruction on coding or robotics, so the support materials guided the delivery of the objectives with key vocabulary, step-by-step code, support videos and PowerPoint Presentations. The objectives’ progression developed their skill and confidence with the learning.
  3. Support for company sales
    Because the curriculum plans addressed the key elements from the USA’s CSTA framework, England’s National Curriculum, and Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, school districts and local councils were able to make multiple purchases to support their school, which in turn supported the company. The objectives being met equipped the sales team with a powerful narrative in their discussions with key stakeholders.

Improving Longevity

A progression plan must be more than a flavour of the month. Development specialists are required to stay abreast of current trends, scientific discoveries, and new learning of historical significance, if that falls to their role of progression creation. But this does not mean that new topics need to be considered for their own plan.

What Deserves a New Pathway — and What Doesn’t

Consider a new civilisation discovered from recently unearthed ruins and preserved monuments. This is a new topic and of significance but creating a plan from something so new becomes both very challenging for the developer and of little individual value to the learner. A more robust approach would be to add additional content to a unit of learning focusing on Ancient Civilisations. The end result of this plan would be to enrich what has already been created:

  1. An additional geographical civilisation, adding depth to the scope of the ancient world.
  2. An additional culture, complete with art forms and potentially texts describing ways of life, enabling comparisons and contrast with nearby and far distant civilisations.
  3. Expanded awareness of the tools used and the processes developed from the tools, further developing a timeline of learning from other civilisations, nearby chronologically.

Or, would you prefer a very narrow plan of the new civilisation. There is always potential that this standalone plan could be sufficient by itself, with a devoted teacher to lead the learning.

Making Room for Change (Even Pluto)

Additionally, a plan needs to be open to change. Consider the solar system. When I was a boy, we had nine planets, and we liked it! Funnily, some teachers didn’t follow scientific news and in one school where I taught, Pluto remained a planet for an extra year, despite input about its demotion.

This change is easy to accommodate. Key vocabulary would need to be altered and introduced. Specifications could be explored allowing for a different look at the current understanding of the solar system, in this instance. Opportunities for visiting specialists, or visits to scientific places of interest, could open up more learning and expand on consolidated knowledge. Or, you could just eliminate Pluto from the plan. Which sounds better to you?

Improving Scope

Some learning can be heavy, challenging, and extensive, in terms of content. The goal of any progression plan is to quickly allow a teacher or facilitator to understand the outcome, design the learning, and assess levels of success. If the time it takes to determine the success of learning is too great, mistakes are made, content is missed, and the structure of the plan topples.

Curriculum planning must clearly direct the teacher to the ‘must have’ elements. The parts of the plan that are essential for success of the whole course. Additionally, progression development should outline an order that is most beneficial, while not being so iron clad that flexibility is outlawed. Different learning environments have different needs, which often require tweaks to order and emphasis.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All – Especially the Second Time

Consider a group of learners who, after completing study in a required subject, failed the final exam. In order to enroll in further study, or entrance into the workplace, they need to achieve the missed qualifications, so they retake the course. Imagine being one of those learners having to sit through the same course with the same progression, the same emphasis, and the same timings. This, as they say, is the definition of insanity: doing the same exact thing and expecting the same result.

But wait, you may say, on the second run they may achieve much better. And I would say to you, “But why did they not the first time?” This second time, you must alter the scope:

  1. Identify the trouble spots by checking the prior evidence.
  2. Rebuild the foundation that is necessary to address the wobbly bits.
  3. Allocate more time for the areas of study you identify as pain points for individuals.

By following this, you maximise the potential for improvement. You maximise the potential for success. As a planner, aim for clarity of purpose and delivery. As a teacher, aim for maximum understanding and look for opportunities to improve at every turn.

Building Pathways that Empower and Don’t Overwhelm

At its best, a progression pathway plan isn’t a solo act. It needs two key voices: the planner and the teacher. It speaks clearly from the planner to the teacher, but it also listens: to feedback, to classroom realities, and to changing needs.

When progression pathways are clear, flexible, and purposeful, they give teachers the confidence to deliver, learners the direction to succeed, and curriculum teams the evidence to refine and evolve.

Whether you’re designing the next great scheme of learning or teaching from one that already exists, curriculum planning is a shared responsibility. Together, developers and facilitators can build something better than either could alone.

Do you have a progression document you’re not sure is working? I help curriculum teams audit, align, and adapt progression pathways for better outcomes — feel free to reach out.

Micro-Learning and Curriculum Design: Strategies for Success

My Education

So, what exactly is curriculum design after all? Why is it worth discussing and why is there such variety in the strategy and writing of it?

After more than 5 decades on our Earth, I have experienced a plethora of styles, approaches, and resources in support of the curriculum with which I have worked. At the beginning my education career, in the mid 1990s, we used the Provincial Integrated Resource Plans, in British Columbia. They were aimed at being cross-disciplinary guides, reinforcing the connectedness of learning across subjects. Planning with them was positive, with guides that helped educators link objectives across subjects. They also reminded children and young people of past learning and extended them toward next steps. Resources were organised by subject and year group to promote buy-in for this new curricular format.

From Canada to Scotland: Working with a New Curriculum

In 2000, I moved (back) to Scotland. I experienced the 5-14 curriculum with a series of levels, A – F. These levels spanned primary years and extended into secondary broad general education. This curriculum included National Tests. Teachers administered these tests when they felt confident that the learners in their care had achieved at the expected standard for a level. Occasionally, head teachers intervened to encourage testing to occur more quickly, but this was not the norm.

After some time in Poland, where planning followed a textbook approach, I returned to Scotland with a new framework: The Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). This system ran from Early Level, where learners are three or four, to fourth Level, where learners are about fifteen or sixteen. This was a more fluid curriculum with scope for progression within a year group or level when recommended by the teacher. It is here that I experienced my first opportunity to guide curriculum development.

Despite the flexibility, the aim was always to get to the end of the year or level, with a hoped for positive report at the end. There wasn’t any sort of recognition for completing a milestone part way through the level or year. Thus began my foray into micro-learning.

Starting the Design Journey

My first foray into design was from a company by the name of Sumdog Sumdog logo

I began working with Sumdog as a teacher advisor. The groups allowed me to share my thoughts about learner engagement and effectiveness of new media. I also shared thoughts on the questions the platform used to encouraged learning. Working within the teacher advisory panels allowed me to experience the variety of viewpoints from fellow educators. Additionally, it helped me come to terms with the wealth of knowledge I had amassed over my years of teaching.

After this, and several class visits for the staff to see Sumdog in action, they asked me to look at their curriculum progression. I started with one curricular area within maths: money. Using the government written curriculum outcome, I engaged in the process of creating steps for success.

Implementing the Process

With discussion with managers, I designed ‘skills’ within a year group or level and ‘steps’ within a skill. Through this, the Sumdog Universal Curriculum was born. Now, rather than the long year, or multi-year, journey to finish, learners had only a skill to master.

To maximise success, I designed an average skill to be achieved within a week. Each year group had about thirty skills, but learners had the opportunity to stretch themselves or revise as needed. If learners wanted to progress beyond their year, there was nothing to stop them. If they wanted to revise content, or build fluency, this opportunity was also open to them.

Alongside the learning journey, I also decided on timings for each step question, challenge level and importance. With these three criteria, learners were

  • given enough time for the question type,
  • rewarded according to the difficulty,
  • progressed to greater challenge only when ready.

This method proved a hit with schools and learners, and the company grew earnings, employees, and reach. I feel good knowing that I was a part of this impact.

One pupil I will never forget, I worked with before Sumdog and saw the fruits of her efforts upon return to the classroom. She had achieved fluency with her arithmetic. She had reached blistering speed with her recall of addition and subtraction to a level difficult to match with a standard only-forward curriculum.

Applicability to Mainstream Learning

After working with several other companies, I have taken my learning back to the classroom, and employ the strategies for steps to success. I have found that young people who are able to see the end of each skill have greater success. I endeavour to encourage all learners to look beyond the day’s learning but not be overwhelmed by a full year.

One successful skill at a time, and celebrated, will lead to happier, more confident individuals in any learning environment. I’ve attached one skill idea below and a template for you to consider.

Planner proformaDownload

Questions to Think About

Have you experienced a change in curriculum design? Do you have a preference for delivery, design, or learning for yourself? Share your thoughts below so we can all learn something new.

Lessons from HomeEd: Empowering Education Beyond Classrooms

HEFFest Banner

I have had the pleasure to work with my kids through the school years in a #HomeEd environment. I have seen them learn and grow into the mature and responsible young adults they are today.

The Workshop

This week I have had the privilege of working with other HomeEd parents at #HEFFest2025 in a relaxed workshop focusing on supporting learning in mathematics, organically designed as the week progressed.

We explored concrete materials to bring numbers to life, each with several uses, applicable to a wide range of learning objectives. Families played logic puzzles and games to covertly engage learners in thinking about mathematical concepts in the spirit of competition. I described quick fire activities with cards, counters, dice, spinners, and fingers to get warmed up and repeatedly practice number sense without pen and paper. As the week progressed, I wrote expanding topic progression plans (broken down into micro steps), allowing parents to identify sticking points and revisit successful learning in order to maximise success.

I found great satisfaction engaging with parents at HEFFest. They are devoted to their kids and their future, giving their time and energy to support their development from good times and bad times (from experience, those bad times can be really quite bad).

Key Takeaways

It was interesting for me to observe some differences between classroom learning and HomeEd learning:

  • HomeEd parents admit they do not know something and feel nervous about teaching a concept, then they quickly do something about it.
  • HomeEd parents take time with learning, if their learners need more time to master a concept, they get it.
  • Learning at home is free from schedules, if a discussion or exploration extends beyond the planned objectives, the plan of learning extends with it.
  • The age of the learner, or suggestions of a regional curriculum document, are a guide to the learning choice, curricula suggest a framework and progression, but should, and do, allow for flexibility.
  • HomeEd parents recognise hard questions and aim to find answers instead of using statements like, “because that is how it is done.”

Reflections

Whether you’re a home educator or a professional in a traditional school setting, there’s much to learn from the successes of HomeEd learners. Home Education offers a different, but equally powerful, path to learning. It’s no longer a fringe movement—it’s a growing, thriving approach embraced by families across the country. If you’re involved in education in any capacity, I encourage you to explore the achievements of learners on this path—you may find inspiration for your own practice

Have you experienced learning outside a traditional classroom? What surprised you the most?

Year in Review with #MSFTEduChat

To see the effect of taking part in a TweetMeet, click here. To find out about how I feel about the opportunity to take part in the biggest TweetMeet so far, read on…

I have been using Twitter fairly regularly for over a year, now, and thought I had a pretty good handle on promoting ideas and involving communities of learners. I do have a good handle on it but still have a bit to go to reach the mastery that the team at TweetMeet carry out oh, so naturally.

This December 17th, the team are organising almost 300 hosts to collaborate on the topic of 2019 and what was great about it for you: what did you manage to create, what did you learn that was new and where are you going next?

 

For me, the TweetMeet experience was definitely a highlight! Not only did it involve me in a wonderful group experience, it showed me: the way to progress in terms of planning for virtual events; how to set better milestones and expand on messages I was sending; the impact that coordinated teams can have in concentrated times.

For my next year of learning, I will be taking this forward with Connected Educator Appreciation Day’s Monthly Meetups to increase our impact with forward thinking people with new and fresh ideas.

If you would like to see one of the TweetMeet’s organisers on camera, check out the 2nd session of our 2nd annual Connected Educator Appreciation Day session on Enquiry and Collaboration. We at CEduAD hope to have more TweetMeet hosts on our upcoming Connected Educator Monthly Meetups (CEMM). 

@TweetMeet

@MicrosoftEdu

#CEduAD

#CEMM

What a meeting that was!!

When I first received my invite to join a TweetMeet with #MSFTEduChat and @MicrosoftEdu, I was excited. The excitement only seemed to grow as time passed and I engaged with the other co-hosts and learned how to best organise and run an event like this.

The images below are a good outline of what was organised for us. The team at #MSFTEduChat really know their stuff and if you ever have an opportunity to work with them, they will help you be your best self for the event.

The goal of the event was engagement, not self-promotion, not corporate promotion, but engagement: get educators sharing; highlight wonderful ideas; encourage conversations; follow people who are interesting, to encourage their PLN to grow! Our job was not to say how great Microsoft is (though it’s pretty good for teachers and learners) or to wax lyrical about any one product that is offered by a company (though plenty of that occurred naturally too: I am still partial to OneNote), our job was to get others to talk, and talk they did.

By the tallies we received, there were over 2 600 comments that featured in the TweetMeet and over 300 participants, both are increases on last month! What an amazing crowd to bring together and nurture. I can’t wait to see and hear about what some of the participants get up to, in the coming school year.

Follow @MicrosoftEdu; search for #MSFTEduChat on Twitter so you can stay up to date on what is coming for connected educators, like you, and connect with others; have a look at the Wakelet that was made of all the links from the event, it might take you a while to get through that one; or you can check out the Wakelet that the co-hosts helped populate; and last, but not least, is the Super Sway outlining everything about this event!

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you at the next TweetMeet.

Returning to a Learning Environment

Holidays can be a godsend after a long year of work. Escaping the routine of coffee, breakfast, work, coffee, home, coffee, sleep can be an invigorating and sometimes necessary event. But when the holidays are complete, where do you start?

  • Your classroom is empty;
  • the walls are bare;
  • you have your class list and details from last year;
  • you have the curriculum guidance and a list of texts;
  • the staff room is stocked with coffee, never forget the coffee.

Do you start with the physical environment: make it engaging and bright, friendly and exciting? Do you start with the organisation of the learners: who is in what group; who will sit where; which books do you want? Do you start with the planning, ensuring that the first days back are full of engaging activities? Do you plan with another teacher? Do you plan with classroom assistants or visiting specialists? Do you reach out to parents before planning? Do you wait until the learners arrive and begin the year together?

So many questions, so little time?

On the 20th of August, I have the distinct pleasure of sharing ideas about the transition between break-time, the holiday, and learning. I will be co-hosting Microsoft Edu’s TweetMeet, with 15 other international educators. We look forward to discussing, with you, ideas about what we do when preparing for this new beginning with a new group of learners.

The format will be a question and answer session that you can follow on Twitter, with the hashtag #MSFTEduChat or #backtoshool. Drop by at 6pm BST, click the link to convert to your time zone, and jump in. The goal is to have a cooperative session where all answers can be read, shared and explored.

For more information, check out our Super Sway! For links about the resources some of the co-hosts use, check out our Super Wakelet. For other information from Microsoft, about this event, check out their Super Education Blog.

We would all love to have you because if you don’t show up and share, we won’t be able to learn from you. I know one of my favourite things to do in all the world is learn.

A Journey with Fear

I have had the pleasure of working with Tim McDonald for some time now, and we have explored many ideas with regard to connections. Lately, Tim has begun writing about fear and is developing a book, “Creating a Healthy Relationship with Fear”.

Tim has taken an interesting approach to this by reaching out to his contacts, and asking for their input, in order to build a grand idea of what fear means to different people and how we each deal with or relate to our fears. 

I had the pleasure to talk with Tim on this point and shared my experience of living in fear as a child growing up in the school system. I continued with this, to discuss how I broke the bonds that held me in place, when I was a young adult. 

In addition to this opportunity to share, Tim co-hosted, with Ayelet Baron, a thought-provoking conversation on fear on a platform called Connectle. The focus of the talk was about how the participants had positively engaged with fear and how they support others to do so. It was interesting in the way that it clearly highlighted fear as a fabcrication of the mind and that it is something that the mind can engage with and relate to. A key take away was that fear can be a roadblock to progress or a boost to fire our actions. Click here to check out Connectle and view the conversation when it is shared, on the 9th of August.  

One perspective that was not discussed by the panel was that of a child. All of the participants had the adult perspective locked and confidently shared what, as adults, we can do to come to terms with fears that are part of our lives, but children do not have some of the luxuries or tools at their disposal that adults do. I offered some ideas to think about, in the text chat, and was invited to appear on camera.

I asked about the following situations:

  • the child who is forced to go to a place of fear 5 days a week for 7 hours a day;
  • the child who lives in that fear and does not change or challenge it because of the possibility of it worsening should they speak out;
  • the child who knows things will get worse if they challenge the current circumstance
  • the child who does not have a voice because of physical or mental limitations, so the adults and peers do not know their thoughts and feelings.

These situations are harrowing, and adults have the responsibility to step in and support. This responsibility does not fall only to adults who work regularly with children but could be something as innocuous as a smile to a child as they get on the bus; a question of support when a child walks with head down and shoulders slumped, or another acknowledgement of some kind. Children have not had the range of experiences adults have and therefore have, generally, not been able to develop the skills and experiences adults have to relate to fear. So, help them to develop.

Be a positive influence to othetrs around you by being open to change; show that change need not be such a major source of fear. Be the person who listens to enable and encourage others, who are stuck, to find their path rather than being the one who has all the answers and will solve all the problems. Model relating to fear, model it in your day to day life and in your interactions with others, regardless of status or age.

I enjoyed talking with Tim and the others on the panel and look forward to opportunities to talk and share ideas, in the future.