‘It’s hard to tell the signal from the noise.’
Nate Silver
In 2015, the blogosphere continued its unstoppable momentum. The Echo Chamber Uncut was set up by edublogosphere commander-in-chief Old Andrew in March, with over 60,000 blogposts in 2015, over 1,000 a week. There are now well over 2,500 education blogs in the UK. The Echo Chamber team selected 5,600 blogposts to reblog last year: over 15 a day.
After Britain’s general election in May, there’s to be a five-year consolidation of education policy in England at the Department for Education to 2020, with 500 new free schools to be set up over the next 5 years.
Here’s my effort to distinguish the signal from the noise in 2015:
5 top blogposts on this blog in 2015
5 treasure trove education blogs
These are the blogs I’ve most often revisited this year:
Reading all the Books on memory
Clio et Cetera on history
Wing to Heaven on assessment
Tabula Rasa on reading
Filling The Pail on research
5 education highlights from 2015
Crowdsourcing Knowledge Organisers
James Theobold’s initiative to share knowledge organisers online is a great idea.
Wellington Festival 2015
Jonathan Simons, Rob Peal, Daisy Christodoulou on Gove’s reforms; Dylan Wiliam on assessment; Ken Robinson on creativity.
ResearchEd 2015
Daisy Christodoulou on comparative judgment; Tim Oates on textbooks; Katie Ashford on grammar; John Brunskill on moral psychology; Jo Facer on memory; Andy Tharby on research; Eric Kalenze on knowledge.
Teaching Learning Takeover 2015
Phil Stock on vocabulary; Chris Hildew on character; Andy Tharby on challenge; Mark Millar on data.
Debating Education at Michaela 2015
Daisy Christodolou and Guy Claxton on teacher-led instruction; Old Andrew and Bruno Reddy on setting and mixed ability; James O Shaughnessy on character; John David Blake and Katie Ashford on Ofsted; Jonny Porter and Francis Gilbert on Gove.
3 intentions for 2016
Re-Resourcing: improving our units on Antigone, Rhetoric, She Wolves and others.
Curriculum Design: creating units on War Poets & Holocaust Poetry, The Crucible; Civil Rights Rhetoric; in History, creating units on the Stuarts, French Revolution, The Slave Trade, The Industrial Revolution; The British Empire and World War.
School Visits: visiting other excellent schools in 2016, after invaluable visits to King Solomon Academy in 2013, Burlington Danes in 2014 and Dixons Trinity Academy in 2015.
3 hopes for 2016
Increasing Signal: hoping The Echo Chamber focuses on reducing the traffic and noise, and increasing the signal from the best blogs in 2016.
Surveying Teachers: hoping Nick Rose’s brilliant survey gets funded and expanded in 2016.
Sharing Resources: hoping the education blogosphere starts to collect and share pupil work in 2016.
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.
Pingback: Articles | Joe Kirby