Week 14: Embedding the Minimum Core

The Minimum Core:

Teachers need to understand fully how low ability in the core subjects: Maths, English and ICT might impact on access, vocational achievement and progression. And that it is necessary that, as teachers, we have sufficient skills to assess and support learners. It doesn't mean, as teachers in FE we need to be experts in these core areas, but we should understand that such basic skills are intrinsic to good teaching.

This was Our lesson Outline for this week

I guess it brought to the fore the reason why we had our Maths and English skills assessed. Although it didn't matter if we were really good or bad, it served to highlight where we are, what level/standard we work at and then we can reflect on room for improvement.

Some more detail on the Minimum core can be read Here, which shows it be part of Inclusive Learning Practice.

ICT:

We discussed the importance of this and how confident we are in this area. Personally, I feel reasonably comfortable/confident, I know a little bit at least. Many of us in the peer group had used Presentations using Power Point when we did our first Micro Teach. I actually use Power Point to produce all my Lessons, even though they only get used in printed form.

Richard introduced me to a new piece of software called Prezi. It's a cloud based presentation software with ZUI, which makes for a flashy looking presentation. It's proprietary software and requires additional proprietary elements such as Adobe Flash so the free elements are somewhat restricted, which was disappointing to me, but fair enough, I understand their philosophy. And since we are seeing such a growing use of Mobile devices and yet a lack of support by Adobe for Mobile devices, personally I'd be inclined not to favour Prezi. Nevertheless, I knocked together a sample presentation:
My Prezi