Lockdown!

In an unfortunate quirk of the episode schedule, we were originally going to put out a lovely episode about our community of international students who travel to Wales to train as teachers here. But that just seemed like adding insult to injury when we’re all confined to our homes by the global Covid-19 pandemic, so we’ve postponed the release of that episode and cobbled together a lockdown special for you to enjoy, if enjoy is the right word. With Tom sitting in a deserted university campus and Emma speaking down-the-line from her house, we discuss the very sudden transition of educational institutions to remote learning approaches. What can we realistically expect to achieve as teachers in this new environment, and how do we keep a critical eye when investigating the huge flood of resources that have been kindly made available by individuals and institutions as a response to the global lockdown? We’re assisted by a blog post from the mighty Tom Sherrington which gives lots of practical advice to those grappling with a new way of working. With many of us wondering whether we might have more time to read, reflect and ponder the big educational questions, we also bring you a discussion of a chapter of Mary Myatt’s book The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence which started off as a remote-learning resource for our students before being repackaged for our podcast audience. We’ll do our best to keep our normal service going as much as possible, and hope all our listeners and their families and friends are keeping safe and well.     ---------- Recorded remotely on 20th March 2020