Blog posts July 2012

Embracing the new

Amelia Peterson
Tuesday, 24 July 2012 - 9:34am

 The new intern cohort has been encouraged to introduce themselves to the IU-blog-readers. As there will soon be suitably embarrassing pictures and bios on this very site, I can head straight into more substantial things. I didn’t have to scout far for subject matter for my inaugural post, as my very first piece of work threw up plenty to think about.

Last week I spent a day transcribing pages of cryptic, penned notes from the Helsinki meeting...

Meaningful work experience - what does it take? From our 6th form work placement student Aisha Kahn

Site Manager
Monday, 16 July 2012 - 11:17am

By Aisha Khan

I have been told once again, to unleash my writing talents (or wrath), so here I go! Ironically me being on a work placement, I am now writing about ‘Learning a Living’. Let’s start with my personal experience of work placements.

As most may know, in the UK there is somewhat a compulsory programme for students to complete whilst they are in secondary school. The pressing question is, and you get given that certificate of attempting to scream employability, how useful is it to go to a uniformed educational...

project-based learning: beware the 'flat pack project'

Alec Patton
Friday, 13 July 2012 - 11:23am

As I prepare to move on from Innovation Unit to my soon-to-begin job at High Tech High, I'm going through a lot of old stuff. The following text was cut from Work that Matters: The Teacher's Guide to Project-based Learning. I still like it, and I wanted it to see the light of day:

Some projects work like assembling flat pack furniture: students follow a set of steps to a predetermined outcome. The end result might look good...