Tag: International

Could you make this up?

Lenore Skenazy in the Free Range Kids blog alerts us to the idea of fake logs for children to play on. She – and many of the people replying – are justifiably bemused, angered or just plain gobsmacked by this, although not everyone is as super-critical as I might have imagined.   I am pondering my response – I may go and whittle a stick while I do.

Dear reader, what are your thoughts? Are plastic logs (the advert is linked here) a nifty gimmick to get children moving? Too sanitised to be of use? A depressing way of undermining natural education? Or what?

Gambia 2012

This year’s trip starts, in some ways, with last year’s video. Click here for the link – we went for a week of working with Gambia College students/graduates, and EY students from Brookes would be doing the same again this year (others may have a different programme). Watching it instantly makes me (as always happens!) eager to go again. This is a long link, and you may need QuickTime to watch it – but it’s worth a look!

Cost?£800.00, organised via Gambia Extra and Alan and Tony from GE are coming on 20th Feb to talk to anyone interested – details on the posters round Harcourt Hill.

Back again

… from the Gambia (see a previous and all-too-brief entry),  no thanks to the titanic rumblings of Eyjafjallajökull.  The University’s article on the subject in Onstream shows us in a very good light – although I could have wished Geoff had been decribed as leader, since he did much, much more than I did.

Our thanks have to go to Alhajie, Brendan, Jenny, Jo and Butch – not to mention Josh and Fatou and Mustapha and all the others – at the Gunjur Project who took us in and looked after us and kept us busy while airlines and politicians panicked around us. We, of course, did not panic at all.

It was interesting to meet new people on this trip. Interesting, for example, to meet the wonderful Fatou who runs Mariamma Mae nursery, a little gem of pre-school provision tucked in behind Gunjur Lower Basic school. More later, perhaps, on this. Life in Gambia College was also good – the hospitality of the staff was, as ever, very welcome. It was also very good to meet some of the other people in College, from more senior University officers through to (I couldn’t say “down to”) VSO workers such as Rachel, whose blog is linked here.

The Gambia

My initial thoughts (selfishly) after this, my third trip to the Gambia, is about HE pedagogy.  It was challenging (refreshing, positive) to have to teach – direct teaching – without recourse to the law of the rectangle, the whiteboard, the interactive WB, powerpoint, video footage. How do we manage without the technology? How does the technology dominate the teaching – and does it affect the ‘message’?

So here’s the song (to the tune “London Bridge is falling down”) I made up and I’ll ponder its significance at another time:

Watch the children every day, every day, every day;

Watch the children every day: Observation.

See what they can nearly do, nearly do, nearly do;

See what they can nearly do: that’s assessment.

Of course the idea of teaching “without” these things already presupposes a negative model of teaching in Gambia College. It wasn’t like that at all. What I had as ‘raw materials’ (if we can use that image, and I’m not at all sure I like it) was a sense of committed good will that was forgiving of my foibles, and a readiness to work.