Risk-taking

Somewhere in the teaching & learning literature, I remember reading that being a creative and innovative teacher requires risk-taking. You need the freedom to do something different, but since experiments don’t always work, that has to include the freedom to make mistakes.

How to build confidence in technology?

As one of the more technologically-literate members of staff in my department, I quite often get asked for help and, I admit, I’ve been known to offer it. But a failure of any kind with new technology can be very off-putting and it’s disappointing when, encouraged by me, a colleague tries something new – but ends up abandoning it in disgust.

The limits of technology?

Today, I was marking coursework, and musing whether I should worry that students can do so much original research electronically these days  that they might never think of going to the library in person – let alone visiting an archive.