What is Education? Lecture 3

Last week the What is Education? module was taken by Steve Gullick.  Steve spoke to us about the governing body and what their role are.  Some roles of goverors are;
- Conduct the school with a view to promoting high standards of educational achievement
- Set appropriate school targets for pupil achievement at Key Stage 2, 3 and 4
- Take general responsibility for the conduct of the school
- Manage the schools budget
- Ensure that the curriculum for the school is balanced and broadly based and in particular that the National Curriculum (NC) and RE is taught.  Also report on NC assessments and examination results
- Determine staff complement and pay policy for the school
- Participate in the appointment of the head and deputy hear teacher and other staff
- Create an action plan after an inspection.

The governing body consists of;
- Parents - Must have children in school.
- LEA - Council picks them.
- Teachers
- Staff - TA'S, caretakers.
- Community - Live near school.
- Head - Only if wants to.
And they have to stay for 4 years even if their child leaves the school.

An agenda for a governing body meeting;
- Apologies for absence
- Minutes of previous meeting - Clark does this
- Matters arising - Attendance etc
- Head teachers report
- Report finance committee - Selection of people look at it, not everyone
- Progress of School Development Plan
- Changes to school uniform
- Report on Governor'  Conference
- Other business
- Date and time of next meeting.
They would have this meeting at least once a term.

What is Education? Lecture 2

The lecturer we had for What is Education this time was; Russell Grigg.  Russell spoke about Estyn.  He spoke about what Estyn does, where it does it and why it does it.  Estyn inspects quality and standards within education and training providers in Wales.  It used on nursery, primary, secondary, independent and special schools. Within those establishments it also looks at; pupil referral units, further education, adult community learning, local authority education services for children and young people, teacher and education training, work based learning, careers companies and offender learning. 

Estyn also provides advice to the Welsh Assembly Government on quality and standards in education and training in Wales.  It also promotes the spread of good practise in education and training. 
Within Estyn there are three fold purposes, these are;
- Provide accountability to the users of the services
- Provide improvement in education and training and
- Inform the development of national policyby the Welsh Government.

Estyn produces reports on institutions and thematic reports. 
The judgements in the reports are based on 4 different categories.  They are;
- Excellent - Establishment has many strengths.
- Good - Many strengths.
-  Adequate - Has a few strengths.
- Unsatisfactory - No strengths.
Each organisation is the reported on and put into one of the four categories.

What is Education? Lecture 1

The first guest lecturer we had for the module What is Education? was Ken Jones. Ken spoke about the local authority’s role in education and issues that effected them. He started by asking is anyone knew who the minster for education in Wales is and how is predecessor is, no one really answered him so he informed us that the minster is Leighton Andrew and predecessor is Jane Davidson. He then went onto speak about their previously being 8 local authorities but the following reorganisation in 1999 there are now 22 unitary authorities. The issue was is the size and capacity of local authorities and the response was move reorganisations into 4 consortia.

Then Ken Jones went to speak about PISA. The in 2006 the PISA (Programme for international students assessment) testing which is set by OECD (Organisation for economic co-operation and development) compared how 70 countries were doing in relation to reading, maths and science. Wales weren’t high in the ranking of the 70 countries, so Wales response was to up the SEF (School effective framework). SEF was Wales' key policy for education reform and its main aim was to improve better learning outcomes and wellbeing for children.

First Lesson!

Last week we had our first lesson of visual communication with Suzie.  We looked at aspects of different logos and how by just seeing a certain logo, for example; when we see a yellow M, we know straight away that its for McDonald's.  We also looked at how an image can portray a certain feeling and we can try and understand what the artist was trying to portray when the picture was being created.  An example of this is;

We said that this picture is trying portray that the person has agony, deep thought and may anxiety issues.  We then watched a video called;  'The Big Shave' by Martin Scorcese.  Before watching the video Suzie hadnt told us the meaning behind it and to be honest whilst watching the video I was a bit shocked about what the man was doing.  However, once Suzie had explained the meaning of the video, which is; the man was shaving and kept on shaving and shaving until he was bleeding and it represent men at war.  So once Suzie explained that I thought it was a good way to explain it, even though it was shocking.



Creative Writing

In today lesson we learnt about creative writing.  We went on to four different websites; Wordle, Graffiti Creator, Tagxedo and Text-Image.  On each website we created different pictures which were made our of words.   On Wordle, I used my blog url and it created a shape out of the words I have used within my blog.  On Graffiti Creator I used my name and edited the graffiti, then on Tagexdo I used my blog again and this time instead of it being a random shape, I used a swallow and from the words on my blog it created the swallow shape out of them.  Finally, Text-Image, I uploaded a picture of a star and wrote the word star and again it made the image out of the word star. 

Tagxedo

Wordle

The Graffiti Creator

Text Image

Movie Maker

Last week we created a video of our university.  We were put into groups and each group had a category and ours was, our university; the place.  We had to film with the flip camera ares of the university.  We filmed areas which we attend the most, for example; certain rooms we were taught in and the main lecture theatre.  We then uploaded the video to the computer and using windows movie maker we edited the video and sped up the video x3.  Then we added the Benny Hill theme tune into the background of the video. 

Placement Week!

During placement week I went to Hafod Primary.  I was in a year two class and had a really good week with the children.  I wasn't able to see any work that the children did as the whole week was dedicated to the Christmas concert and rehearsals and the children watching dvds and playing games.  It was still really nice to be able to interact with the children and see how much they were enjoying Christmas and having fun with the concert. 

The Nativity

The lesson before the end of time of term we were given activities to do, to find different ways of presenting an activity, which was The Nativity.   Me and Cara found a paragraph about The Nativity and our friend spoke into a microphone and we played around with different sounds and the outcome that we chose was that the paragraph would be in a chipmunk voice.