Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream

What is ed lecture

Hey everyone! Today's guest lecturer for What is Ed was Graham Allen, who is the Environmental Manager in Swansea Metropolitan University and he talked about Sustainable Education. He talked a great deal about the many parts of Sustainable Education, here are some of the points he made:

• Education is critical for promoting sustainable development.
• Agenda 21 (Clarifies and extends ability, encourages students to reflect, debate and form opinions

Coporate responsibility involves:

• Coroporate strategy
• Integration
• Management
• Performance and impact
• Community
• Environment
• Market Place
• Work Place

Digression: The benefits of growth involves:

• Employment
• Income increases
• Decrease in poverty
• Improves standards of living
• Economic stability
• Creativity
• Innovation

GDP (Gross Domestic Product)
Causes:War

• Deforestation
• Crime
• Pollution

Not included:

• Loss of natural resources
• Caring work
• Womens work

Employment

• Sharing work hours
• Higher working hours means less marginal benefit
• Shorter working
• hours means more jobs and more leisure time.

Political Strategy

• The public can be part of the trnssition to sustainable society
• Global down-turn is in part a result of avoiding the inevitable signs
• Public need leadership to work towards sustinability
• National Assembly has a duty to promote sustainable development in everything that it does

And the principles of embedding sustainable development as a central organising principle

• Long termism
• Integration
• Involvement

5 themes of ESDGC (Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship):

1. Links between society, economy, environment and our lives
2. Rights for the present and future generations
3. Relationship between power, resources and human rights
4. Local and global implications
5. Actions individuals cn take in response to the implications

Welsh Government recommends that ESDGC continues to be delivered through:

• Leadership
• Learning nd teching
• Practice within an HEI
• Partnership and community working
• Research

Finally! The three components of sustainble development are: environment, economic and social sustainability.

Well that's everything, toodles!

Visual communication with Suzie

Hey all, at the start of the lesson we carried on finishing the posters that we started last week on 'Sense of Place'. Once we finished, one person out of each group had to hold our poster up and describe what is on there and why.
Suzie then told with us about how metaphors are useful and important in images, songs, films etc. Suzie then asked us to think of as many songs with lyrics that are metaphors, ours were:

• Lady Gaga - Marry the Night
• Adele - Rolling in the Deep
• Rihanna - Only Girl in the World
• Shakira - Hips don't lie
• Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
• Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire

We then looked at a pile of images that were advertising campaigns. We had to say what the metaphor was, and order the images (Most shocking proocking to least etc.)

Finally, we watched a clip of Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech that inolved a great deal of metaphors. Some of the metaphors i noticed were:

• Thirst for freedom
• Drink from the cup of bitterness and hatred
• Ocean of prosperity
• Bank of justice is bankrupt
• Palace of justice
• Wallow in the valley of despair
• Justice flows like water

That's all for Vis Com this week, Toodles!!!

What is ed lecture

Hey all! This weeks lecture was with Olive Hopker, who is the Head of Planning and Development in Swansea Metropolitan University.
Olive talked to us about Collaboration-V-Competition in education. She talked about:

• Ministerial statements
• Employment and Governance Structure in Wales
• Collabortion and Competition Issues
• Regional Planning and the role of HEFCW (Higher Education Funding Council for Wales)
• Benefits and limitations for HEI (Higher Education Institute)

She also gave us examples of government statements from mostly Leighton Andrews, for:

• Schools / Further Education Sector
• Higher Education

What is ed seminar with Steve Gullick 13/2/12

This was our second and last seminar for what is education this term, and it was with Steve Gullick again. In this session he told us some more intereting facts about governors, this time focusing more on the whole of Wales. Some of the facts were:

• A large number of the governing body in Wales do not have the full number, and are short of community governors with a business background.
• Poor/deprived areas lack governors e.g: Valleys and rural areas (lots of little schools, low population)
• Stuart Ranson researched 'School Governors and Improvement in Wales' and found that the vast majority are white, middle class, middle aged. Not enough ethnic governors. This might be due to many factors: Racism? Lack of confidence? Perceptions? Language barrier?
• Not all governors are well trained, all 22 LEA's must provide free training. 14 of them said that a few governors were trained, a lot of courses are cancelled due to lack of interest, and 5 for lack of support.

Steve also told us that Peter Earley (London Institute of Education) researched the types of governors, and the amount of each one in Wales. He found that there were 4 types of governors: (Majority to least)

1. The Supporters' club
2. The Partners
3. The Abdicators
4. The Adversaries

Steve also gave us a copy of the Welsh Assembley Government's leaflet (That Steve produced) on Becoming a school governor.

What is ed seminar with Steve Gullick 6/2/12

This was our first seminar session with Steve Gullick, he talked about the health and safety aspect of being a governor. He gave us a few hyperthetical examples, on of them being:
' As a governor, you are obviously very concerned that health and safety matters are dealt with well at your school. This is usually th case, but the headteacher tells you that she is no structure to the way teachers prepare for overnight trips and visits for pupils. To deal with this situation the governing body sets up a working party of 3 governors and 2 teachers to produce a checklist for teachers to go through before they take an overnight trip. You are a member of the working party, what do you include on the checklist? '

Some of the things we included:

• Meeting with parents before trip
• First aid kits and a first aider
• Contact details and medical details, medication etc
• Food & drink, spare clothes, money etc
• List of pupils and staff, itinerary, risk assesment etc

He also told us the diference between strategic and tactical planning. Strategic being the governors (more long term) and tactical being the school (more short term).