Could the development in artificial intelligence dubbed “deepfakes” really “trigger social unrest, political controversy, international tensions” and “even lead to war” ? Have our previous methods of telling fact from fiction been irremediably undermined? As teachers, we’re careening down new paths in evaluation of knowledge claims, trying to learn to steer in time to teach our students to drive! Technology just got even more amazing, and our […]
Read more “Fake news” is a term that I would happily consign to the annals of 2016 and 2017. Goodbye. But as it lives on, it morphs meaning – and takes on further allure for TOK analysis. It doesn’t just face us, belligerently, with issues of truth and falsehood. It also offers an excellent current example, rooted […]
Read more Standing at the centre of the world: it’s a compelling image. But just who or what is at the “centre”, and what does planting that centre do to our knowledge? Clearly, this question of “centrism” threads through the Theory of Knowledge course, and there are plenty of good entry points to take students into discussion […]
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Late July and August, you’ll often find me settled in a deck chair, enjoying the sunshine and summer breeze on my skin, cool drink in one hand, book in the other. Bliss! The book will almost certainly be a psychology title, and every so often it leads me to reflect upon and ponder life a […]
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As Psychology Subject Officer for WJEC Eduqas, an important part of my role is to support the teachers who are teaching my specifications. I do this in a variety of ways: offering face-to-face CPD; answering emails and phone calls; developing resources for the classroom etc. However, a British Psychological Society (BPS) survey of psychology teachers, […]
Read more Well, we’ve done it at last. We’ve hit the Big Time. Suddenly the topics that we chat about every day in class – such as concepts of truth and reliability, the nature of “facts”, methods of validating or rejecting knowledge claims, and the dynamic and formative role of perspectives – have come into the glaring […]
Read more Professional development for Theory of Knowledge teachers? February 6 is the last day for signing up for the current iteration of the course Making Sense of the News: News Literacy Lessons for Digital Citizens. It’s an online course offered on coursera.org. It can be done fairly inexpensively for credit or audited for free (presumably without the February 6 sign-up). Me, I’ve cruised through its outline and […]
Read more I’m taking a little holiday from watching the news. I do this sometimes. I turn off the volume to watch all those mouths move, then let all of the frustrated and angry people float away, sealed in their lovely bubbles. Escapism? Yes – and no. Sometimes it’s the only way to imagine myself outside my […]
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As a geography teacher, I don’t think I’m alone in priding myself on developing a real passion amongst my students for the world around us. Geography lessons need to be interactive and full of high quality resources targeted at taking our students on weekly virtual field trips. I often spend my Sunday evenings running through […]
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I was a relative late-comer to Twitter: I set up a personal account in 2011 really just to see what all the fuss was about. Reading tweets from celebrities and comedians was of limited interest to me personally but it was through following newspapers, journalists and current affairs programmes that I realised just how many […]
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