Welcome back! I hope your holiday was restful yet productive, and that four a.m. panics about little Susie in year 11 who hasn't fully grasped the significance of the summer term were kept to a minimum.
So far, I've avoided giving away much about what kind of role Pinemarten Education will have. It is, as the website suggests, in the business of making educational apps and technological solutions aimed at both learners and institutions. I wanted to give you a sneak peak into one of the projects that is currently in the pipeline.
Project Stoat (Not its real name...):
Core assumptions about any aspect of teaching practice need to be interrogated frequently because so much of what we do is a reaction to fundamental limitations of the traditional teaching model (many students, few teachers), a model ought to be changing fast in response to new technology.
With the new focus on assessment without levels in Britain, and intense focus on the methods of assessment, accountability and data-driven decision making all over, I have been doing a lot of thinking. The whole 'assessment without levels' issue could, with appropriately rose-tinted spectacles, be seen as an opportunity to really question the system rather just a massive, ill-conceived headache. What if instead of just replacing one system with another (virtually identical) system, you started again from scratch. What might that look like?
Here's what I came up with.
Stoat will:
1. Allow for rapid interventions at teacher, department and whole school level.
2. Be consistent across all areas of the curriculum.
3. Collect useful data in a way that is neither invasive nor burdensome for teacher or pupils.
5. Make data useful by ensuring very fine control over reports.
That's all I'll tell you for now. If you are interested in the project, please get in touch or follow, like or subscribe for updates.
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@pinemartened