Olive Hopker Guest Lecture

On the 14th of February the Guest that took the lecture was Olive Hopker the ‘Head of Planning and Development at Swansea Metropolitan University.’

The lecture was about ‘Collaboration –v– Competition’ we discussed the difference between Collaboration and Competition in Higher Education.

The first thing that we talked about was the employment structure in Wales and the statistics. I learnt that Micro enterprise represents almost 95% of all businesses in Wales, therefore only approximately 5% of businesses are large as people these days are creating small businesses. The next thing that was discussed was Universities and how they collaborate with each other. This allows courses to be improved, sharing libraries and Internet sites such as turn it in. On the other hand Universities are in competition for a number of things such as Student recruitment, Staff recruitment and Research funding although they collaborate for research they compete for funding. All universities want the best staff possible.


There are many Collaboration benefits. Sharing experience and knowledge, cost saving, value of a ‘external eye.’ This meaning someone from the outside looking in, someone who is not involved sometimes has a clearer view on things. Swansea Metropolitan University and Trinity College are due to collaborate.

Swansea University says that the collaboration will

“Improve advice, guidance and information provision, extend support for Personal Development Planning processes offered through the curricula, focus more attention on employer liaison and marketing and expand online services and resources.” (2012)

The main benefit for the Competition is to promote efforts to do better and Provide choice, this allows choice of alternative products/services such as more choice of courses.


We later talked about the advantages and disadvantages of a Large Higher Education Institute and Small Higher Education Institute. We come to the conclusion the Small HIE are easier to manage as they have small classes allowing more flexibility although there are small resource bases such as libraries and there are limited choices. The disadvantages in a small HEI would then be the advantages at a large HEI the most obvious of the large HEI would be the large resource base. There are a lot more things; there is a wide subject base and a range of courses, meaning more opportunities for staff career moves. The limitations of being in a large HEI would be there are no flexibility with course’s if your on a course then you would have to stick to it as most of the other courses would have large classes. There would be complex structures and rigid procedures.

As I am in a small HEI at Swansea Metropolitan I have to agree with there are more advantages at being in smaller HEI as I am able to contact my lectures and tutors easily and prefer to be in smaller classes where we all get to know each other very well.


References

Swansea University (2012) Careers Service accessed 2nd April from
http://www.swansea.ac.uk/careers/recruiters/employerneedsandtrends/careersservice/

Policy and Practice: Governors

On the 23^rd of January we had a guest speaker due to Andy’s absence. Steve Gullick took the session. He gave us an insight on the role of governors today, he spoke about the role a Governor has and what it indicates and the purpose of a Governing body.  The department of Education describes the main purpose of a Governing body is to “help the school to set high standards by planning for the schools future and setting targets for school improvements.” (2011)

Steve Gullick told us that Governors were volunteers, which I found particularly interesting as they make such broad decisions such as the school budget, the start and finish time of the school and teachers salary. Which showed how much power governors have. He then went on tell us about the arguments that there are about Governors. One argument is that Governors should be experts about the decisions that they make, then on the other hand that Governors should not be experts but they should be people who live near the school such as the Parents and the Council as they want the school to do well. Another argument is that maybe Governors should be paid but the concern with that is that it may attract the wrong type of people to be Governors people who just want the money and don’t really care about the school but recently the new chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw cited on the BBC news said that "My view is that when a school is doing poorly, we need to think about paid governance.” (2012)

The Governing body is currently made up of people who have a steak in the school these can be

• Parents
• LEA’s
• Teacher’s
• Staff for example a Care Taker
• Community
• Headmaster

All Governors can only be Governors for 4 years and then another election takes place. School Search UK  “The full governing body meets at least once a term to discuss the running of the school.” (2006) This gives everyone who wants to be a governing a fair chance.

References

Department of Education (2011) Retrieved on 25^th January from

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/governance/a0056625/the-role-of-governor-within-the-governing-body

Education and Family ‘Pay school Governors’  (2012) accessed on 1^st March from

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17204548

Schools Search UK (2006) School Governors retrieved 28^th March from

http://www.schools-search.co.uk/school-governors.php

Visual Communication- Metaphors

This theme took place over 2 sessions. The first session we were put into groups of 2-3 and we had to create a collage. The theme was sense of place. Kate and I made a collage representing us individually and our lives. We put images such as make up, money, food etc. We had a section about university and a section, which was about us. It represented the journey of being in university and the responsibilities we had that we may have never had before such as finance, being able to budget our money for food and accommodation. During the next session we presented our collage to the class, we talked about the images representing university, which gave us a sense of freedom and then why different images were significant to us.

We then went on to discuss metaphors as a class, the first task we had was to think of artists that used Metaphors in their lyrics in different songs, It was surprising to see how many do. Some examples that Kate and I came up with were ‘The ice inside your soul’ and  ‘Baby you’re a firework’ we then talked about how metaphors are used to send out a powerful message. Not just in songs but also as images. Susie gave us a number of images to look at, one, which I found particularly powerful, was the image below.  Which is about animal testing.

At the end of this session we watched a video by Martin Luther King which was about his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and looked at the different types of metaphors that he used to emphasis on things that he was saying.

Visual communications

The new module that we have recently had is Visual communication with Suzie Pugh. Suzie specialises in art and in our first session with her we talked about pictures and their meaning. At the start of the session we all sat in a circle and we discussed images that we had seen that has stuck in our minds that day. People said a range of things that they had seen some had captured a image in their mind such as the scenery that they saw when they first woke up and looked out of their windows, other said logos that they had seen.  We then talked about why it was that these particular images/logos stuck in our minds and if they had any relevance to us or had some sort of meaning.

I talked about the fields that I had saw when I looked out of the window this morning, I think it stuck in my head so much because when I caught a bus to University I passed a lot of fields as I do every morning, So in my mind I had captured a still picture of the landscape.

We then looked at some photos that Suzie had on a PowerPoint for the class and tried to discover the meaning behind them.

One of the pieces that we looked at which interested me was ‘The Scream’ by Edward Munch in 1983.

The main focus of the picture is what seems to be a man screaming with his hands on his face this instantly makes the viewer want to look more into the painting to see why he is screaming which entices you to look further. The colours that are used which looks like the sky are all vibrant oranges which looks a lot like a sunset. Underneath blues are used which seem to create some sort of pond. There are no straight lines in the painting, which may suggest how the painter was feeling. There are 2 people in the background which are either walking towards the man that is screaming or away, this may be the reason for the man screaming. I think that the painter is trying to portray ‘fear’ in this painting. It is a very strong painting.

What is Education Guest Speaker.

The start of the week, Monday 16^th January instead of having Andy – What is Education Policy and Practice we had a guest speaker. The guest speaker was Dr Russell Grigg who is head of the South West Wales canter of Teaching Education who gave us an overview of ESTYN.

I learnt a number of things from this lecture such as what ESTYN does.

• ESTYN’s aim is to ‘achieve excellence for all learners in Wales (ESTYN 1998)
• ESTYN also provides advice for the Welsh Assembly and promotes good practice in education and training

Dr Russell Grigg also talked about the 3-fold purpose

1. Provides accountability to the users of services and other stakeholders through our public reporting in providers

2. Promote improvement in education and training

3. Inform the development of national policy by the Welsh Government

I also learnt about the inspections as Dr Grigg had inspected schools himself so I knew the information had come from a reliable source. The inspections involved people and the relationships between Learners, Teachers, Parents and Governors. The inspector would have to judge whether certain areas of the school were Excellent, Good, Adequate or Unsatisfactory.

A good teacher is important as they have a big influence on children and that listening to learners is good practice, The inspectors aims are to further education standards.

Reference’s

Estyn (2002) Retrieved 21st January 2012 from http://www.estyn.gov.uk/

Wordle

This was very simple. To make this I typed some words that linked in with my theme and then I clicked 'randomize' to see what style i liked best.

Tagxedo

I used Tagxedo to create this image with slight animation. I listed the words that I wanted in my image and then used the a shape that I wanted and I used the treble clef. I couls chnage the colour of it and also the font. What I liked about this one was when you scroll over a word it turns the right way up and the goes bigger so you can see what it says.

The graffiti creator

I experimented with 'The graffiti creator' It was up to me what word I chose, so i decided to use my theme 'Music' This would make the word into graffiti, I could then stick to one colour or use a number of colours. The edit features consisted of addind stripes, bubbles and then could also add shadows. I found this one very simple to understand and was fun to use.

Text-Image

I used Text-image to create a image out of text. The theme i chose to work with was 'Music'. The word I used was 'Enrique' as I like the artists music. It was up to me what word I chose but i felt picking a artist was relevant to the image. I could change the background colour but decided to keep it to black.

Placement before Christmas

During my week of placement I went to a primary school. There were 8 classes, starting with nursery/reception and ending with year 6.

Each class had a computer and a interactive whiteboard, during the mornings the teacher would use the computer to do the register and to record information about the children such as if they were having dinners and had paid, if they were entitled to free school meals or if the child was in sandwiches.

In the year 6 class that I went the teach handed each child a mini whiteboard and marker pen and then used the interactive whiteboard for a group activity. This way all the children could interact together by playing educational games. 

In year 4 there was a similar activity but there was no mini whiteboards. The teacher gathered the class on the carpet and one boy and one girls was chosen, these were the 'team leaders'. They did a simple task on place value but really enjoyed being able to use the interactive pen and write on the board. It came more about the Boys V Girls challenge but the children learnt a lot on the topic.

Nursery and reception were a little different  but they did have a interactive whiteboard except it was left on all day on ceebeebies website for children to go on whenever they wanted.

Whilst being in the school I also noticed that there was a PC suite, this consisted of 16 computers and 1 interactive whiteboard. The children would use these to type up letters, make posters and play educational games.